Saturday, September 5, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
Signup Catch-22...
OR: How not to implement website sign-up.
A couple of days ago, a friend sent me a large file. Rather than trying to do it via email, he used a new service -- SugarSync -- to forward the file to me. This is one of several "store and forward" file services, designed for people who want to exchange large files securely and don't have their own public-facing ftp or alternative download sites. Some of the alternative services that I've already used include Pando, and YouSendIt. They all seem to offer similar services: free accounts with low transfer rates; paid accounts with higher transfer rates; and free receipt of files. They all require that you sign-up for the account: free or paid. Notification is often done via email, although Pando installs a small program that monitors your account.
I received the SugarSync notification email, clicked on the link, and signed up following their requirements. It was all pretty standard: you sign up, they send you a confirmation email, you click on the link embedded in the email to confirm that you actually requested this account, and you're good to go. Until you click on the link in the confirmation email, you've got an account but you can't use it.
All that went according to plan, but then I didn't receive the confirmation email. I went back to the site and they make it very easy to request another confirmation email and also suggest that you check your spam folders just in case. I did all that (several times, actualy) and still no confirmation email. After checking and re-checking that I had entered my email address correctly, I went to their website to get some help... and here's where the Catch-22 fired.
Unfortunately, I've seen this pattern in the past: someone gets a good idea and implements it on the web. They put up a nice app, reasonable functionality, positioned properly, and they start to get some traction. Unfortunately, they just don't have the right level of support to make it work. ALL software has bugs, no matter how good your developers are, or how good your testing is, or what development framework you use: there are ALWAYS bugs.
It's a huge mistake to either assume that there won't be many/any bugs or to not plan to actively support your users and fix those bugs.
Too bad... this is one service that I'm definitely writing off my list.
A couple of days ago, a friend sent me a large file. Rather than trying to do it via email, he used a new service -- SugarSync -- to forward the file to me. This is one of several "store and forward" file services, designed for people who want to exchange large files securely and don't have their own public-facing ftp or alternative download sites. Some of the alternative services that I've already used include Pando, and YouSendIt. They all seem to offer similar services: free accounts with low transfer rates; paid accounts with higher transfer rates; and free receipt of files. They all require that you sign-up for the account: free or paid. Notification is often done via email, although Pando installs a small program that monitors your account.
I received the SugarSync notification email, clicked on the link, and signed up following their requirements. It was all pretty standard: you sign up, they send you a confirmation email, you click on the link embedded in the email to confirm that you actually requested this account, and you're good to go. Until you click on the link in the confirmation email, you've got an account but you can't use it.
All that went according to plan, but then I didn't receive the confirmation email. I went back to the site and they make it very easy to request another confirmation email and also suggest that you check your spam folders just in case. I did all that (several times, actualy) and still no confirmation email. After checking and re-checking that I had entered my email address correctly, I went to their website to get some help... and here's where the Catch-22 fired.
- I tried Support, but you must be an approved user to use the Support pages!
- I couldn't find an email address that I could use for requesting help; I tried support@sugarsync.com and am still waiting for a response.
- I tried to follow the instructions associated with their entry about not receiving a confirmation email (see http://support.sugarsync.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=1073). In this post, they instruct you to "Submit a Ticket" but, of course, you have to be logged in to perform this action, as they immediately re-route you to a login screen.
- I thought I would try their Discussion Forum (not something I usually like to do because of often poor response in these types of forums) and then found this complaint about lack of support, posted on August 25, 2009, and still with no 'official' response.
- And there's no phone number on the site.
Unfortunately, I've seen this pattern in the past: someone gets a good idea and implements it on the web. They put up a nice app, reasonable functionality, positioned properly, and they start to get some traction. Unfortunately, they just don't have the right level of support to make it work. ALL software has bugs, no matter how good your developers are, or how good your testing is, or what development framework you use: there are ALWAYS bugs.
It's a huge mistake to either assume that there won't be many/any bugs or to not plan to actively support your users and fix those bugs.
Too bad... this is one service that I'm definitely writing off my list.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Form input time waster...
Why is it that often when you open up a page on which there is an input form, you have to manually move your cursor to the first field before you can actually start entering your data? I.e., you have to either TAB to the field or move the pointer and click in the field. When you consider all the forms that are on the web and all the people that use these forms, this is incredibly inconvenient and time-wasting.
For example, 1and1.com does place your cursor properly when prompted for a webmail or customer login, but not when you are working on the forms to manage your site. And, when I go to Amazon, I'd like to type in the name of the book I'm searching for, but first I have to click on the search box before I can start entering my text. The Office Depot shopping site does a nice job of putting your cursor into the "quantity" field when you go to a catalog page... just type in how many you want and move on.
I find this really irritating: if there's a form on a web page, it's a pretty safe bet that they want you to add some data into some of the fields...right? So why don't they start you off in the right place?
It's actually quite easy to do: it just takes a call to whatever command is available in the web development framework (it's called "setting the focus" to that field) when displaying the form and your user is ready to go. Once I realized this, I added this to my own 4MyPasswords site.
Why can't everyone do this? Sure would save a lot of time...
For example, 1and1.com does place your cursor properly when prompted for a webmail or customer login, but not when you are working on the forms to manage your site. And, when I go to Amazon, I'd like to type in the name of the book I'm searching for, but first I have to click on the search box before I can start entering my text. The Office Depot shopping site does a nice job of putting your cursor into the "quantity" field when you go to a catalog page... just type in how many you want and move on.
I find this really irritating: if there's a form on a web page, it's a pretty safe bet that they want you to add some data into some of the fields...right? So why don't they start you off in the right place?
It's actually quite easy to do: it just takes a call to whatever command is available in the web development framework (it's called "setting the focus" to that field) when displaying the form and your user is ready to go. Once I realized this, I added this to my own 4MyPasswords site.
Why can't everyone do this? Sure would save a lot of time...
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
What kind of 'management' is this...?
Many of you already know about the program wmiprvse.exe -- it's a part of the Microsoft Windows Management Instrumentation feature. It's supposed to help your windows system run better, but it has a problem -- a big problem. It frequently starts sucking up 50% or more of the CPU, sometimes only briefly but sometimes for hours at a time. I know this from personal experience as well as from the many many postings there are on the web (here's one example) asking about how to fix this problem. I haven't found any satisfactory answers yet.
One post suggested this was because there was a bad network card on the network, but I have yet to find pointers on where to find the information that is being analyzed and how to find the errant network card... or whatever else is happening.
One problem with wmiprvse.exe is that you cannot simply terminate the process: if you do, say with Task Manager, then it immediately comes back and jumps right back up to the magic 50%+ CPU utilization. Even reboots aren't guaranteed to fix the problem and who wants to reboot their Windows machine and lose even more time?
Well, a few days back, I found a work-around. It's just a band-aid, I know, but I'm happy to be able to use it. The fix is to suspend the wmiprvse task. The way I do this is through the Process Explorer utility offered by the SysInternals folks -- this is just one of the many excellent programs that they offer (and in a nice little ironic twist, they're now owned by Microsoft so the problem and the solution are all in the family).
Once you have Process Explorer installed and you see that wmiprvse.exe is doing it's CPU-sucking thing, just find it on the Process Explorer list, right-click it, and select the Suspend option. The task stays in the system, but doesn't get any CPU cycles, unless you Resume the task.
At this point, I've had wmiprvse.exe suspended for over 3 days. Occasionally, I do a Resume and see it hit 50% and then just re-suspend. There aren't a bunch of error messages in the event log, so... no bad things seem to be happening to my system and I'm getting full use in spite of wmiprvse.
Thank you, SysInternals... nice stuff!
One post suggested this was because there was a bad network card on the network, but I have yet to find pointers on where to find the information that is being analyzed and how to find the errant network card... or whatever else is happening.
One problem with wmiprvse.exe is that you cannot simply terminate the process: if you do, say with Task Manager, then it immediately comes back and jumps right back up to the magic 50%+ CPU utilization. Even reboots aren't guaranteed to fix the problem and who wants to reboot their Windows machine and lose even more time?
Well, a few days back, I found a work-around. It's just a band-aid, I know, but I'm happy to be able to use it. The fix is to suspend the wmiprvse task. The way I do this is through the Process Explorer utility offered by the SysInternals folks -- this is just one of the many excellent programs that they offer (and in a nice little ironic twist, they're now owned by Microsoft so the problem and the solution are all in the family).
Once you have Process Explorer installed and you see that wmiprvse.exe is doing it's CPU-sucking thing, just find it on the Process Explorer list, right-click it, and select the Suspend option. The task stays in the system, but doesn't get any CPU cycles, unless you Resume the task.
At this point, I've had wmiprvse.exe suspended for over 3 days. Occasionally, I do a Resume and see it hit 50% and then just re-suspend. There aren't a bunch of error messages in the event log, so... no bad things seem to be happening to my system and I'm getting full use in spite of wmiprvse.
Thank you, SysInternals... nice stuff!
Monday, July 27, 2009
Thanks, Microsoft... NOT!
It seems as if the latest set of Windows XP updates don't work as well as one would like. I've already run into two time-consuming problems and I'm hoping it won't get worse now that Windows 7 is in manufacturing.
1) The first was an update (don't know which one) that reset many of my internet security settings. The result was that FireFox and IE both stopped downloading files and IE kept saying that my setup was insecure. It took me quite a while, but I finally figured it out: Go to "Control Panel | Internet Options | Internet" and click the "Custom Level" button. What I found was that the options under "Miscellaneous" had been reset to "Disable" instead of "Prompt" as they had been. Once I found and fixed that, I could download files again.
2) The second was the disabling/breaking of scanners. I've had all-in-one printer/faxes for quite some time and use them heavily through PaperPort. All of a sudden, it stopped working: the error message said the scanners weren't setup, even though they previously had been. It wasn't a PaperPort problem as two other machines with the same setup but wihtout PaperPort also couldn't scan documents, even using the vanilla Windows software. No amount of fiddling fixed the problem -- the only thing I could do was completely uninstall the printer/fax software and re-install from scratch. At least that did the trick.
Not a very productive few days, as the problems had to be analyzed, and then 3 machines had to be fixed. I don't scan on my Vista machine, but I'll bet they didn't have a problem.
Sheesh!
1) The first was an update (don't know which one) that reset many of my internet security settings. The result was that FireFox and IE both stopped downloading files and IE kept saying that my setup was insecure. It took me quite a while, but I finally figured it out: Go to "Control Panel | Internet Options | Internet" and click the "Custom Level" button. What I found was that the options under "Miscellaneous" had been reset to "Disable" instead of "Prompt" as they had been. Once I found and fixed that, I could download files again.
2) The second was the disabling/breaking of scanners. I've had all-in-one printer/faxes for quite some time and use them heavily through PaperPort. All of a sudden, it stopped working: the error message said the scanners weren't setup, even though they previously had been. It wasn't a PaperPort problem as two other machines with the same setup but wihtout PaperPort also couldn't scan documents, even using the vanilla Windows software. No amount of fiddling fixed the problem -- the only thing I could do was completely uninstall the printer/fax software and re-install from scratch. At least that did the trick.
Not a very productive few days, as the problems had to be analyzed, and then 3 machines had to be fixed. I don't scan on my Vista machine, but I'll bet they didn't have a problem.
Sheesh!
Saturday, July 25, 2009
More GREAT customer service...
Recently I purchased a new Brother color printer (Model# HL-4040CDN). I've wanted a color duplexing printer for some time now so that I can print some of my marketing collateral, but they've always been too expensive. Well... this one was on sale (brand new) at Office Depot for $225.00 and I just couldn't pass it up: competing models from HP were in the $500 and up range. Every thing went fine with the setup until I went to print booklets using Fineprint, an awesome print utility that I've been using for years and wrote up some time back.
Imagine my surprise when the booklets came out wrong! Fineprint has a great little feature that allows you to easily print two-sided (duplex) documents even if the printer doesn't support it automatically. It runs through a series of tests, gets information from you, and then controls the printing so that you put the pages back in for the second side in just the right way - very nice! With automatic duplexing printers, they figure out how to set the duplex parameters on-the-fly so that everything works out fine.
Not on this Brother, however: no matter what I did, the pages always "flipped" in only one way that worked some of the time and not others (without getting into too much of the gory details, pages can be flipped on the long edge or the short edge, which makes a difference for portrait or landscape mode). I worked with fineprint support (they're great) and Brother support and finally realized that the Brother printer was not accepting dynamic printer commands to change the page flipping parameters: the current driver allowed you to manually change them, but that's certainly not what I expect from a modern printer with automatic duplexing.
When Brother tech support told me that it was working "as designed" and that I'd just have to manually change the settings, that was the last straw. I wrote a letter to the President of Brother USA, explained the situation and pointed out how unacceptable this was.
A few days later, I received a call from an customer service advisor in the President's office and was assigned to a technical advisor. We started working together to describe the situation so that the developers could understand what was going on.
To make a not-so-long story shorter, I now have a new version of the printer driver which properly handles all the automatic duplexing features that I expected from this printer.
Now that's what I call service! Thank you Brother.
Imagine my surprise when the booklets came out wrong! Fineprint has a great little feature that allows you to easily print two-sided (duplex) documents even if the printer doesn't support it automatically. It runs through a series of tests, gets information from you, and then controls the printing so that you put the pages back in for the second side in just the right way - very nice! With automatic duplexing printers, they figure out how to set the duplex parameters on-the-fly so that everything works out fine.
Not on this Brother, however: no matter what I did, the pages always "flipped" in only one way that worked some of the time and not others (without getting into too much of the gory details, pages can be flipped on the long edge or the short edge, which makes a difference for portrait or landscape mode). I worked with fineprint support (they're great) and Brother support and finally realized that the Brother printer was not accepting dynamic printer commands to change the page flipping parameters: the current driver allowed you to manually change them, but that's certainly not what I expect from a modern printer with automatic duplexing.
When Brother tech support told me that it was working "as designed" and that I'd just have to manually change the settings, that was the last straw. I wrote a letter to the President of Brother USA, explained the situation and pointed out how unacceptable this was.
A few days later, I received a call from an customer service advisor in the President's office and was assigned to a technical advisor. We started working together to describe the situation so that the developers could understand what was going on.
To make a not-so-long story shorter, I now have a new version of the printer driver which properly handles all the automatic duplexing features that I expected from this printer.
Now that's what I call service! Thank you Brother.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
GREAT Customer Service... Priceless!
I recently checked in with Timebridge, a relatively new scheduling app that I had previously signed up with and forgotten about. I found that I had two accounts, setup under two different email addresses. I wanted to cancel one account and add that email address as an alternate to the account I was keeping, and -- as usual these days -- there was no way to cancel online: I had to send an email. I used their generic form to request assistance, and resigned myself to the usual delays or complete non-response that I've experienced in the past.
You can imagine my surprise when I got a response within 30 minutes! Not only that, but it was actually an intelligent response, not some canned "We got your email, now sit back and wait..." mumbo-jumbo that you usually get. The fellow (Lior) actually gave me the option of deleting the unwanted account or consolidating it into the one I was keeping. Now that's help! I said 'consolidate' and within another 60 minutes it was done: I had one account with two email addresses.
BTW, Timebridge is a great little scheduling app which (in its free incarnation) let's you contact folks, offer them meeting alternatives, and gives you back information as to who accepted which dates/times. Very helpful for teams that don't work together on a Novell Groupwise or Microsoft Exchange server. The paid versions offer web conferencing and conference calling services.
Highly recommended!
You can imagine my surprise when I got a response within 30 minutes! Not only that, but it was actually an intelligent response, not some canned "We got your email, now sit back and wait..." mumbo-jumbo that you usually get. The fellow (Lior) actually gave me the option of deleting the unwanted account or consolidating it into the one I was keeping. Now that's help! I said 'consolidate' and within another 60 minutes it was done: I had one account with two email addresses.
BTW, Timebridge is a great little scheduling app which (in its free incarnation) let's you contact folks, offer them meeting alternatives, and gives you back information as to who accepted which dates/times. Very helpful for teams that don't work together on a Novell Groupwise or Microsoft Exchange server. The paid versions offer web conferencing and conference calling services.
Highly recommended!
Friday, June 12, 2009
When is "Support" not support?
When it's Canonical support for Ubuntu, that's when. Hard to believe, but it's true.
I've been doing some development using Linux & Ruby on Rails and needed an occasional helping hand with Linux sysadmin duties. Who better than the folks who created the distro that I'm using.
Well... first of all, it took forever to get someone to respond to my email queries as to what would be covered with the support agreement. It took over two weeks to get the answers I wanted (at one point, I had been waiting several days and the sales person finally contacted me and said "We're out all this week so it'll have to be next week" (!) I should have known if they had problems taking my money that they might have problems providing support.
But I really wanted the support so I persisted. Finally, I put together a long email list of applications and services that I would need help with and the sales guy emailed back: "No problem". The list included Apache, Mongrel, and several other apps. I pointed out that I wouldn't need help with the internals of Ruby on Rails, but really wanted sysadmin help (installation, upgrade, initialization... standard stuff like that).
So today I'm authorized and I make my first call: for some reason, I can't get my Mongrel servers to start up at boot time and I want help configuring Apache so that it all works nicely. I get a fellow on the phone pretty quickly (that's good), start to describe my issue and as soon as I say "Apache", he says: "You have desktop support; that's a server issue!". I explain that my requirements have all been documented and approved in detail; he checks his log (the emails are all there - that's good) and informs me that's a mistake and he doesn't support that.
By now I'm pretty sure that this isn't going to work for me, so I try to simplify the whole thing and ask: "OK, how can I just get my Mongrel startup script to run when the system boots?" Rather than answering that he checks his notes a bit, and comes back with the question: "How did you install this? From a separate script or from the Ubuntu standard package?" I start to explain that this was some time ago and I believe I installed from a script, but he interrupts to state: "Did you install this from the Ubuntu package source or not? That's a 'yes' or 'no' question." Things are obviously going downhill at this point, but I still really want the answer to my simple question so I just say "No; not from the Ubuntu script".
Next question from the 'support' tech: "What version of Kubuntu are you on?" I respond: "Kubuntu Hardy". He says: "So I presume you're on Hardy for the LTS (Long Term Support) option?" I start to say: "Well... I'm there because my last ugprade didn't go well and I could use some help upgrading to Jaunty..." but he interrupts again and says: "That's a 'yes' or 'no' question!"
At this point, I'm done and I want a full refund, so I say: "Maybe we'd better escalate this so that I can just cancel this service!" And... you guessed it... he's the only person there and he (of course) can't cancel the service. He can only make a note and tell me to expect a call from London on Monday.
I get the call and they cancel my service with no problems... that's good.
So! How good is Canonical support? That's a 'yes' or 'no' question, folks, and the answer for me is 'no'.
I've been doing some development using Linux & Ruby on Rails and needed an occasional helping hand with Linux sysadmin duties. Who better than the folks who created the distro that I'm using.
Well... first of all, it took forever to get someone to respond to my email queries as to what would be covered with the support agreement. It took over two weeks to get the answers I wanted (at one point, I had been waiting several days and the sales person finally contacted me and said "We're out all this week so it'll have to be next week" (!) I should have known if they had problems taking my money that they might have problems providing support.
But I really wanted the support so I persisted. Finally, I put together a long email list of applications and services that I would need help with and the sales guy emailed back: "No problem". The list included Apache, Mongrel, and several other apps. I pointed out that I wouldn't need help with the internals of Ruby on Rails, but really wanted sysadmin help (installation, upgrade, initialization... standard stuff like that).
So today I'm authorized and I make my first call: for some reason, I can't get my Mongrel servers to start up at boot time and I want help configuring Apache so that it all works nicely. I get a fellow on the phone pretty quickly (that's good), start to describe my issue and as soon as I say "Apache", he says: "You have desktop support; that's a server issue!". I explain that my requirements have all been documented and approved in detail; he checks his log (the emails are all there - that's good) and informs me that's a mistake and he doesn't support that.
By now I'm pretty sure that this isn't going to work for me, so I try to simplify the whole thing and ask: "OK, how can I just get my Mongrel startup script to run when the system boots?" Rather than answering that he checks his notes a bit, and comes back with the question: "How did you install this? From a separate script or from the Ubuntu standard package?" I start to explain that this was some time ago and I believe I installed from a script, but he interrupts to state: "Did you install this from the Ubuntu package source or not? That's a 'yes' or 'no' question." Things are obviously going downhill at this point, but I still really want the answer to my simple question so I just say "No; not from the Ubuntu script".
Next question from the 'support' tech: "What version of Kubuntu are you on?" I respond: "Kubuntu Hardy". He says: "So I presume you're on Hardy for the LTS (Long Term Support) option?" I start to say: "Well... I'm there because my last ugprade didn't go well and I could use some help upgrading to Jaunty..." but he interrupts again and says: "That's a 'yes' or 'no' question!"
At this point, I'm done and I want a full refund, so I say: "Maybe we'd better escalate this so that I can just cancel this service!" And... you guessed it... he's the only person there and he (of course) can't cancel the service. He can only make a note and tell me to expect a call from London on Monday.
I get the call and they cancel my service with no problems... that's good.
So! How good is Canonical support? That's a 'yes' or 'no' question, folks, and the answer for me is 'no'.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Great little image editor...
I've been using Paint.Net for several months now and don't know how I got along without it (actually, I do know: poorly). It's fast, easy to use, reliable, and it fits my communication style.
What I like to do when communicating with folks is include a portion of a screen shot and highlight the area that I'm discussing. This can be circling a field on a form or shading the area. Some products are too big and bulky for this (read "PhotoShop" or "Gimp", for example, both of which I use) and some don't have the simple drawing tools (read the Microsoft built-in tools or most of the basic image editors available).
Get Paint.Net at www.getpaint.net. I think you'll enjoy it!
What I like to do when communicating with folks is include a portion of a screen shot and highlight the area that I'm discussing. This can be circling a field on a form or shading the area. Some products are too big and bulky for this (read "PhotoShop" or "Gimp", for example, both of which I use) and some don't have the simple drawing tools (read the Microsoft built-in tools or most of the basic image editors available).
Get Paint.Net at www.getpaint.net. I think you'll enjoy it!
Saturday, February 21, 2009
When is a trial not a trial?
Today I'm looking for an outliner. You know, a simple application that I can make quick & dirty outlines with, possibly with notes attached to each outline level. I'm willing to buy one if it works for me, so I go on the lookout for a trial so I can take it out for a spin before I plunk down my money.
One of the products I download and start to use is Action Outline. It's a 2-pane outliner (meaning that the outline is on the left and the notes associated with each outline item are on the right. It's got quick & easy commands for inserting, deleting, moving items and very quickly I start to think: "Maybe this is the one?".
And then it happens. I add an outline item and get the message:
"Only 7 sub-items allowed in evaluation mode!"
They have a 30-day evaluation period, but that's not enough for them -- they cripple the product so that you can't really test it. This is similar to other products which don't allow you to print more than a few items or more than one page in evaluation mode, for example.
I have a policy designed to avoid wasting my time/money: if a product is crippleware, I don't test it or use it... it immediately goes into the trashbin. Maybe the developers are afraid that real testing might lead to problems, so all they want to do is whet my appetite and get me to buy the thing on blind faith? NOT.
Note to Product Developers: if you want me to evaluate your product, then make the whole thing available so that I can actually evaluate it.
One of the products I download and start to use is Action Outline. It's a 2-pane outliner (meaning that the outline is on the left and the notes associated with each outline item are on the right. It's got quick & easy commands for inserting, deleting, moving items and very quickly I start to think: "Maybe this is the one?".
And then it happens. I add an outline item and get the message:
They have a 30-day evaluation period, but that's not enough for them -- they cripple the product so that you can't really test it. This is similar to other products which don't allow you to print more than a few items or more than one page in evaluation mode, for example.
I have a policy designed to avoid wasting my time/money: if a product is crippleware, I don't test it or use it... it immediately goes into the trashbin. Maybe the developers are afraid that real testing might lead to problems, so all they want to do is whet my appetite and get me to buy the thing on blind faith? NOT.
Note to Product Developers: if you want me to evaluate your product, then make the whole thing available so that I can actually evaluate it.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
What was Microsoft think... Oops; wrong question.
Now here is a real catch-22, perpetrated by our good friends, the Microsoft Outlook development team.
As a security move, Microsoft changed Outlook sometime back to not allow recipients of an attached MS Access file (something.mdb) to even see the file, let alone save it or open it. If you get one of these files in Outlook, it's there, taking up space, but it might as well be in Timbuktu for all the good it does you.
So what happens when you try to open that email in another, smarter email reader? All you get is a lone "winmail.dat" file -- that Microsoft proprietary format which they used for "rich format" emails. Completely unusable.
In other words, don't ever use Outlook to email an Access MDB file -- it just doesn't work. Obviously someone wasn't thinking when they made this change... or they just didn't care. Take your pick.
As a security move, Microsoft changed Outlook sometime back to not allow recipients of an attached MS Access file (something.mdb) to even see the file, let alone save it or open it. If you get one of these files in Outlook, it's there, taking up space, but it might as well be in Timbuktu for all the good it does you.
So what happens when you try to open that email in another, smarter email reader? All you get is a lone "winmail.dat" file -- that Microsoft proprietary format which they used for "rich format" emails. Completely unusable.
In other words, don't ever use Outlook to email an Access MDB file -- it just doesn't work. Obviously someone wasn't thinking when they made this change... or they just didn't care. Take your pick.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Kodak can't remember numbers...
Just to set the record straight: I really love my Kodak M883 digital camera: it's lightweight, has great optics [sure, I'd like more than 3X zoom, but this is a relatively low-end consumer model], easy-to-use controls, and takes really great pictures.
However, this morning, I stumbled onto the dark side of the Kodak implementation: every time you offload your images from the camera SD memory stick, the camera starts renumbering at 1! Unbelievable... and tech support told me that this applies to most of their current cameras.
What this means is that you can't simply copy the images into the same folder (if, for example, you organize your images by month or by subject for easy retrieval)... that won't work because sooner or later you'll have have two images called "100_0001.jpg", "100-0002.jpg", etc. What a pain... and such a simple thing to have done right in the first place. My older Nikon and Kodak cameras don't have this problem.
Come on, Kodak... you can do better than this.
So here's the simple but irritating work-around. I found out by testing that the camera searches the SD card and finds the highest-numbered image in the image folder (that's "\DCIM\100KM883" for my model; yours will have a different model number but the '\DCIM\" part should be the same) and starts one higher than that. If there are no images in that folder, then it starts at 100_0001.jpg.
To solve this problem, make sure that there is one image left in the image folder that is at least equal to the highest number you have already saved. Easy way to do this is to simply delete all the images except the last one. That way, the camera will start numbering at the next higher number, which is just what you want. Or delete everything from the image folder (like many image managers such as Picasa do after offloading the images), and then copy/create a new file with the last image number that you have used.
If you're a *nix user, cygwin user, or Mac Terminal user, you know that the 'touch' command will do this for you quickly and easily. If you're on Windows, you can download a free version of the touch command and then say "touch:DCIM\100KM883\100_<4-digit number>.jpg" (substituting the correct drive letter and image number) and it will create an empty file and thus cause the camera to number as you would expect it to.
However, this morning, I stumbled onto the dark side of the Kodak implementation: every time you offload your images from the camera SD memory stick, the camera starts renumbering at 1! Unbelievable... and tech support told me that this applies to most of their current cameras.
What this means is that you can't simply copy the images into the same folder (if, for example, you organize your images by month or by subject for easy retrieval)... that won't work because sooner or later you'll have have two images called "100_0001.jpg", "100-0002.jpg", etc. What a pain... and such a simple thing to have done right in the first place. My older Nikon and Kodak cameras don't have this problem.
Come on, Kodak... you can do better than this.
So here's the simple but irritating work-around. I found out by testing that the camera searches the SD card and finds the highest-numbered image in the image folder (that's "\DCIM\100KM883" for my model; yours will have a different model number but the '\DCIM\" part should be the same) and starts one higher than that. If there are no images in that folder, then it starts at 100_0001.jpg.
To solve this problem, make sure that there is one image left in the image folder that is at least equal to the highest number you have already saved. Easy way to do this is to simply delete all the images except the last one. That way, the camera will start numbering at the next higher number, which is just what you want. Or delete everything from the image folder (like many image managers such as Picasa do after offloading the images), and then copy/create a new file with the last image number that you have used.
If you're a *nix user, cygwin user, or Mac Terminal user, you know that the 'touch' command will do this for you quickly and easily. If you're on Windows, you can download a free version of the touch command and then say "touch
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
If Vista is so great, why does it...
not recognize that a file has already been backed up?
I'm using (the new) Windows backup [Editor's Note: Why break the old backup routine and not even provide a way to get data from the old backup files?] and doing a weekly incremental backup, which is supposed to backup only the files that have changed since the last backup.
However, I notice that all my backups are over 8Gigabytes, and I know I don't use that much space in a week. I dig into the backup directories and see that -- each week -- the "incremental" backup is including a 5.5Gigabyte file that hasn't changed in months!
Go figure...
I'm using (the new) Windows backup [Editor's Note: Why break the old backup routine and not even provide a way to get data from the old backup files?] and doing a weekly incremental backup, which is supposed to backup only the files that have changed since the last backup.
However, I notice that all my backups are over 8Gigabytes, and I know I don't use that much space in a week. I dig into the backup directories and see that -- each week -- the "incremental" backup is including a 5.5Gigabyte file that hasn't changed in months!
Go figure...
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Ring-around-the-password...
Just installed a new version of CloudMark Desktop (was SpamNet) onto my system and ran into a most frustrating version of ring-around-the-password (they're not the only one; see my previous comments about DirecTV... shame).
Here's the deal...
I've had SpamNet on my machine for several years -- ever since the first beta -- and love it. It does a terrific of blocking spam and not black-holing too many of my wanted emails. I've had the same password for most of that time as well. Great service!
However, when I did a clean install of the latest version, I had to access My Account, so I entered my email address and password: "Invalid password" came back. I tried it a couple of times to make sure that I had typed it correctly but no, it still complained. I checked my password storage at www.4MyPasswords.com [Full disclosure: I developed and support that free site] and yes, I had the correct password.
So I clicked on the link to reset my password, followed the instructions, entered my new password and -- you guessed it -- I got "Invalid password" again, even though I had copied the new password to my clipboard and pasted it back in: no chance of getting it wrong that way.
What I found out after some experimentation is that CloudMark does not accept special characters in their password prompts(!) yet they blithely allow you to type in special characters when resetting your password -- no message, no warning, they just disappear.
I finally figured this out, entered a new password without any special characters (I had used an asterisk, as this make password guessing more difficult and my password more secure) and now everything works again.
So, I give CloudMark two Tech-Blech(tm) awards:
Tech-Blech award #1 for implementing such a poor user interface that throws away data without telling the user.
Tech-Blech award #2 for designing such poor securty by not allowing special characters in their passwords and thus reducing the security of their site.
Here's the deal...
I've had SpamNet on my machine for several years -- ever since the first beta -- and love it. It does a terrific of blocking spam and not black-holing too many of my wanted emails. I've had the same password for most of that time as well. Great service!
However, when I did a clean install of the latest version, I had to access My Account, so I entered my email address and password: "Invalid password" came back. I tried it a couple of times to make sure that I had typed it correctly but no, it still complained. I checked my password storage at www.4MyPasswords.com [Full disclosure: I developed and support that free site] and yes, I had the correct password.
So I clicked on the link to reset my password, followed the instructions, entered my new password and -- you guessed it -- I got "Invalid password" again, even though I had copied the new password to my clipboard and pasted it back in: no chance of getting it wrong that way.
What I found out after some experimentation is that CloudMark does not accept special characters in their password prompts(!) yet they blithely allow you to type in special characters when resetting your password -- no message, no warning, they just disappear.
I finally figured this out, entered a new password without any special characters (I had used an asterisk, as this make password guessing more difficult and my password more secure) and now everything works again.
So, I give CloudMark two Tech-Blech(tm) awards:
Tech-Blech award #1 for implementing such a poor user interface that throws away data without telling the user.
Tech-Blech award #2 for designing such poor securty by not allowing special characters in their passwords and thus reducing the security of their site.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
And they call this "Customer Support"?
Where do they dream up this stuff that they call a user interface...?
So I go online to the Intuit/QB site, can't find anything helpful, and go to submit a problem report. I get ALL THE WAY through writing it up, filling out their prompts, click the 'Submit' button and get this display:
They couldn't tell me that in the very beginning?
Note to Intuit: This is an excellent way to alienate your customers and ensure that you get no feedback!
I'm working in QuickBooks (2007) and I get an error:
(SideNote: I've been seeing lots of 'help' errors in various products these days -- maybe they just don't figure that it's worth getting it right).
(SideNote: I've been seeing lots of 'help' errors in various products these days -- maybe they just don't figure that it's worth getting it right).
So I go online to the Intuit/QB site, can't find anything helpful, and go to submit a problem report. I get ALL THE WAY through writing it up, filling out their prompts, click the 'Submit' button and get this display:
They couldn't tell me that in the very beginning?Note to Intuit: This is an excellent way to alienate your customers and ensure that you get no feedback!
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
What did you say my password is?
When is your password not your password?
When the company decides to change their password handling and implements it poorly.
Case in point: I used to have a "strong" password (i.e., one that's harder to guess because I have used special characters and relatively random selection of characters) at DirecTV -- "gt*9facts" (not my real password, of course). I've used my strong password for well over a year now with absolutely no problems. BTW, if you want a few pointers on creating a strong password that's easier to remember, visit http://www.4mypasswords.com/welcome/tutorial. Or see the Wikipedia entry on strong passwords.
Just the other day, I needed to login to my DirecTV site and entered that password: it failed. I tried several times (I can make typing mistakes :-) but to no avail. I finally clicked the "Forgot your password?" link, thinking that maybe I had changed the password and forgotten about it.
Imagine my surprise when the email from DirecTV told me that my password was, in fact, "gt*9facts"! Even cutting/pasting from the email into the website yielded a password failure.
Searching through the site, I finally found that they now had a policy that you could only use alphanumeric characters in your password -- that is, the "*" in my password was invalid.
So what went wrong here?
Not the right way to treat a customer!
When the company decides to change their password handling and implements it poorly.
Case in point: I used to have a "strong" password (i.e., one that's harder to guess because I have used special characters and relatively random selection of characters) at DirecTV -- "gt*9facts" (not my real password, of course). I've used my strong password for well over a year now with absolutely no problems. BTW, if you want a few pointers on creating a strong password that's easier to remember, visit http://www.4mypasswords.com/welcome/tutorial. Or see the Wikipedia entry on strong passwords.
Just the other day, I needed to login to my DirecTV site and entered that password: it failed. I tried several times (I can make typing mistakes :-) but to no avail. I finally clicked the "Forgot your password?" link, thinking that maybe I had changed the password and forgotten about it.
Imagine my surprise when the email from DirecTV told me that my password was, in fact, "gt*9facts"! Even cutting/pasting from the email into the website yielded a password failure.
Searching through the site, I finally found that they now had a policy that you could only use alphanumeric characters in your password -- that is, the "*" in my password was invalid.
So what went wrong here?
- First, DirecTV implemented their change poorly. It's one thing to require new visitors to use the new requirements -- that's a simple change to the input validation scheme. It's totally another thing (and poor user interface design) to also change the processing of an existing password to exclude already-accepted characters. At the very least, what they should have done is allow existing passwords to continue to work; much less hassle for their users.
- Second, DirecTV sent out a bad "Here's your password" email. If they implemented the change they did, then they should have put smarts into the rest of their password system. What they could have done is parse the password, note newly invalidated characters and either: (i) pointed out the problem and provided a link to automatically generate a new password; or (ii) modified the password, replacing those invalid characters with a standard replacement.
- Finally, DirecTV reduced the ability of their users to generate strong passwords. Granted, many users do not generate strong passwords. However, please don't take away that capability for those of us who do want flexibility in generating good passwords. Better security is better.
Not the right way to treat a customer!
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Outrageous forms
Ever go to one of those sites for a "free" article and then get hit with an unbelievably long form where all of the fields are required? Obviously some marketing hack who figures this is a great time to fill their database with all kinds of wonderful information that they can them mine for gold.
Well, the same thing can also happen with companies that you already have a relationship with or with signups for fee events. And this can be exacerbated with poor website design and sluggish response.
I recently had one of those situations when attempting to send a question to Cingular about my online account. I wanted to know why my online bill had not yet been posted for the current month. So I figured I'd send them a message. They very conveniently had a link on their site to "Email us your billing questions". I thought this would be the quickest and easiest way to communicate with them... boy was I wrong!
It's a 3-step process (they say). Step 1 is a confirmation of your basic account information: no problem there. My difficulties started in Step 2, where they want to know what my problem is about.
Well... this looks like a 3-step process in and of itself, and it's only Step 2. Worse than that, there is obviously a round-trip to the server to display this information and it took 15-30 seconds to update the page after each selection. And the final item ("Sub-topic 2") simply returned a "There are no options for this Sub-topic" -- at least they told me before I had to wait for that item. But still, totally unacceptable!
Once you get past this page (if you get past it... I was beyond the point of trying to communicate with Cingular: now I wanted to see how bad this could be). I expected it to get worse, and I was right! Here's Step 3 of the dialogue. Notice that there are two images here: the list of questions (all required) that they ask you for can't be displayed on a single page!
The list of questions is unbelievably long and they are all required! I even have to enter (HAVE TO!) enter my current snail mail address before I can submit a help request... how bad can you get?
I guess they don't really want to get questions -- they just make it too hard to submit them!
Suggestions to Cingular: (1) Get some faster servers; (2) Read "Don't Make Me Think" (Krug); (3) Have real people check out your designs before inflicting them on your poor users.
Well, the same thing can also happen with companies that you already have a relationship with or with signups for fee events. And this can be exacerbated with poor website design and sluggish response.
I recently had one of those situations when attempting to send a question to Cingular about my online account. I wanted to know why my online bill had not yet been posted for the current month. So I figured I'd send them a message. They very conveniently had a link on their site to "Email us your billing questions". I thought this would be the quickest and easiest way to communicate with them... boy was I wrong!
It's a 3-step process (they say). Step 1 is a confirmation of your basic account information: no problem there. My difficulties started in Step 2, where they want to know what my problem is about.
Well... this looks like a 3-step process in and of itself, and it's only Step 2. Worse than that, there is obviously a round-trip to the server to display this information and it took 15-30 seconds to update the page after each selection. And the final item ("Sub-topic 2") simply returned a "There are no options for this Sub-topic" -- at least they told me before I had to wait for that item. But still, totally unacceptable!
Once you get past this page (if you get past it... I was beyond the point of trying to communicate with Cingular: now I wanted to see how bad this could be). I expected it to get worse, and I was right! Here's Step 3 of the dialogue. Notice that there are two images here: the list of questions (all required) that they ask you for can't be displayed on a single page!
The list of questions is unbelievably long and they are all required! I even have to enter (HAVE TO!) enter my current snail mail address before I can submit a help request... how bad can you get?
I guess they don't really want to get questions -- they just make it too hard to submit them!
Suggestions to Cingular: (1) Get some faster servers; (2) Read "Don't Make Me Think" (Krug); (3) Have real people check out your designs before inflicting them on your poor users.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Passwords & misinformation...
I continue to be amazed at the number of ways that people can botch signups for online services, and Dr. Dobb's Life 2.0 conference just reminded me of that.
You go to their site to register for this free conference, and you have to give them a password. The first question is "Why?" There's certainly nothing private about registering for a conference that I can see, but what the heck, I'll give them my password.
The instructions clearly say:
LIFE 2.0 PASSWORD (SIX CHARS MINIMUM)
so I carefully type in my usual "non-secure" password which has a special character included (old habit of putting in something a little less guessable, and the one I commonly use for these kinds of "Who cares?" registrations) and attempt to move on.
Up comes a dialogue box that says "Blah!"
yep, you read that right: "Blah!"
Hardly what I'd call a user-friendly response to a perfectly reasonable password that has been accepted by maybe 95% of the websites that I visit. After I click "OK" on this message (not what I would really like to tell them, but that's my only choice), they finally display "Password invalid! Please re-enter".
Notice that they don't tell me what's wrong with my perfectly valid password... just that it's wrong and I should try again.
(Un)Fortunately, I've learned that some sites -- like Dr. Dobb's site -- just don't get it when it comes to passwords. They:
And just why is a special character (a few sites have only a few special characters that they don't allow... go figure!) not allowed anyway? It's not like a password is going to be 'executed' and thus open the door for some kind of hack... that is true isn't it Dr. Dobbs?
Too bad... it shouldn't be this difficult!
You go to their site to register for this free conference, and you have to give them a password. The first question is "Why?" There's certainly nothing private about registering for a conference that I can see, but what the heck, I'll give them my password.
The instructions clearly say:
LIFE 2.0 PASSWORD (SIX CHARS MINIMUM)
so I carefully type in my usual "non-secure" password which has a special character included (old habit of putting in something a little less guessable, and the one I commonly use for these kinds of "Who cares?" registrations) and attempt to move on.
Up comes a dialogue box that says "Blah!"
yep, you read that right: "Blah!"
Hardly what I'd call a user-friendly response to a perfectly reasonable password that has been accepted by maybe 95% of the websites that I visit. After I click "OK" on this message (not what I would really like to tell them, but that's my only choice), they finally display "Password invalid! Please re-enter".
Notice that they don't tell me what's wrong with my perfectly valid password... just that it's wrong and I should try again.
(Un)Fortunately, I've learned that some sites -- like Dr. Dobb's site -- just don't get it when it comes to passwords. They:
- Don't give you good instructions on how to enter your password.
- Make poor decisions about what is an "acceptable" character in a password.
- Don't give you good instructions when things don't work as expected.
And just why is a special character (a few sites have only a few special characters that they don't allow... go figure!) not allowed anyway? It's not like a password is going to be 'executed' and thus open the door for some kind of hack... that is true isn't it Dr. Dobbs?
Too bad... it shouldn't be this difficult!
Monday, March 19, 2007
Start with a good story
Today was a good technology day... nice way to start this blog. I've got an HP LaserJet 3055 All-In-One printer and have been fairly happy with it. Besides printing/copying, I use it pretty heavily for scanning articles, images, drawings, so that I can save them and/or email them to business associates.
Well, today, it stopped scanning for no apparent reason. Now this is actually not a good thing -- why does working technology just stop working? Not very reliable... but that's another story.
I did my own troubleshooting but got nowhere. So I went to the HP website, found the InstantSupport links, and eventually found the "Live Chat" option. [Note to HP: The pages were so busy that I really had to search for what I wanted... much more challenging than it should be. Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think" would be a good resource.]
Having finally found the Live Chat option, I expected the frequent drill on these sites of answering tons of questions -- the interview checklist, if you will -- before I could get into the meat of solving the problem. Pleasantly enough, there were only a very few questions and a couple of quick tests and I was directed to a download to "Fix scanning" -- and it did, first time.
The most difficult part of the exercise was moving the printer to get the Part Number. The configuration printout from the device amazingly doesn't show this! [Another Note to HP: Put this information on the printouts, please.]
Total time to solution: less than 15 minutes. Congratulations, HP!
Well, today, it stopped scanning for no apparent reason. Now this is actually not a good thing -- why does working technology just stop working? Not very reliable... but that's another story.
I did my own troubleshooting but got nowhere. So I went to the HP website, found the InstantSupport links, and eventually found the "Live Chat" option. [Note to HP: The pages were so busy that I really had to search for what I wanted... much more challenging than it should be. Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think" would be a good resource.]
Having finally found the Live Chat option, I expected the frequent drill on these sites of answering tons of questions -- the interview checklist, if you will -- before I could get into the meat of solving the problem. Pleasantly enough, there were only a very few questions and a couple of quick tests and I was directed to a download to "Fix scanning" -- and it did, first time.
The most difficult part of the exercise was moving the printer to get the Part Number. The configuration printout from the device amazingly doesn't show this! [Another Note to HP: Put this information on the printouts, please.]
Total time to solution: less than 15 minutes. Congratulations, HP!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)