Here’s a gem I’d never seen before.

(via Alan Cross – A Journal of Musical Things)

The ninofficial YouTube channel is full of more awesome HD concert footage.

Having been let down by overhyped social art apps in the past, I wasn’t sure Mixel was going to be interesting for more than a few minutes, but between $600k in funding (short-lived Color raised over $40m) and Vinh’s design and UX experience from four-and-a-half years at the New York Times has paid off. I was immediately captivated, and spent almost an hour browsing others’ collages, remixing them, and creating my own.

I have no idea how they intend to eventually monetize this. Peter Kafka over at All Things D asked him just that during a brief video presentation, and although Vinh did offer up things like in-app purchases and marketing tie-ins, he was coy on details (that was too easy, I couldn’t resist).

For now though, Mixel is a hit – notwithstanding the criticized requirement for logging in via Facebook, no doubt to piggyback off a huge existing network rather than slowly build their own.

The next few weeks will show whether this will become as big or bigger a hit as Instagram, and the months to follow will reveal whether they can take this from social phenomenon to viable business.

A year ago, John Gruber posted a solution for completely removing Flash while retaining the ability to pull up content should the need arise.

This is a great fix for two reasons. First, it will increase the overall performance of your system by increasing battery life, running cooler and loading pages faster. Second, it will provide passive feedback (via analytics) to the site owners that you are not running Flash, and ideally push those sites to transition to web standards HTML5 more quickly.

Since that post, a few key things have changed.

Starting with the latest generation MacBook Air, new Macs that ship with Lion no longer include Flash pre-installed. While this means that owners of new Macs no longer have to manually uninstall Flash, they still need a suitable way of accessing Flash content when required.

Also, Chrome has since added a feature that automatically updates the browser to the newest version. Unfortunately, this breaks the keyboard shortcut documented in Gruber’s tutorial by constantly changing the application name listed in Safari’s developer menu. This feature cannot be disabled from within the application, enter the following workaround.

First, if your Mac still has Flash player installed, uninstall it using Gruber’s original instructions:

Flash Player was in the default location: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/. I moved “Flash Player.plugin”, “flashplayer.xpt”, and “NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave” out of that folder and into a new folder I created next to it named “Internet Plug-Ins (Disabled)”. All you need to do to disable them is move them out of /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/.

Next, disable auto-updates in Chrome by executing the following command in Terminal.

defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0

Finally, create a custom keyboard shortcut to open the current page in Chrome, which has its own self-contained Flash runtime. Gruber’s instructions still apply here as well:

I’ve also added a shortcut for opening the current Safari page in Chrome quickly. First, if you haven’t done so already, enable Safari’s Develop menu. (It’s a checkbox in the “Advanced” panel of Safari’s preferences window.) The Develop menu contains an “Open Page With” sub-menu, which lists all the web browsers you have installed on your system. Using the Keyboard Shortcuts section in System Preferences, I set a custom menu key shortcut for the command to open the current page in Google Chrome. Whenever I’m on a page in Safari with Flash content I wish to view, I hit that shortcut, and boom, Chrome launches and loads that page. (Hint: when you create the custom shortcut, and are asked for the name of the menu item, just use “Google Chrome” or “Google Chrome.app” (whichever appears in your Open Page With sub-menu).)

That’s it. You’ve now rid your system of an ever-present Flash installation, but still left a way out for those pesky restaurant menus and auto manufacturers that just can’t take a hint.

A little history

Of course, Flash on iOS specifically has been a bone of contention for unwavering iPhone fans on the one side and proponents of Android’s self-proclaimed ‘openness’ on the other for a number of years. The lingering conflict came to a head in April 2010, when Apple published a piece by Steve Jobs called Thoughts on Flash. It’s interesting to note the personal nature in which this was presented. Very few communications that were officially published by Apple were attributed to Steve. In fact, going back through the last few years of releases, I can’t find anything else beyond his August 2011 resignation as CEO, a copy of Steve’s letter informing staff of his medical leave in January, and another letter addressing health concerns in January 2009.

Other “open letters”, such as the July 2010 piece addressing antenna issues with the iPhone 4 were simply attributed to ‘Apple’

The Open Letters

As for the content of Steve’s Thoughts on Flash:

[…] Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

That letter prompted a bizarro personal response from Adobe’s Cofounders and Chairmen. The piece speaks only of free, open markets and PostScript and PDF’s success, but does not address any of the very specific concerns Steve outlined in his piece. The two then go on to accuse Apple of “[undermining] the next chapter of the web”, and imply that they are trying to control the Web. Ironic, given that Adobe has been tyring to force Flash on the Web while Apple is trying to force it away – competitive forces at work.

The End

Over a year passed with little change, until yesterday ZDNet broke the news that Adobe would cease work on its mobile Flash runtime.

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.”

Earlier today, Adobe confirmed the news in a longwinded release that really could have just said “We’re shuttin’ ‘er down”.

Though porn, car and restaurant site developers are no doubt in a panic over this move that sets a clear signal that Flash – on any platform – is on the way out, an accessible Web based on standards came a significant step closer to eventual reality today.

I was curious if ‘Phantogram’ was just a made up term and discovered, to my delight, a fascinating 3D photography and printing technique where an image appears to float outside the paper it’s printed on. Read more over at Wikipedia, and be sure to look at the referenced work by Boris Starostra – it’ll help make more sense.

The App

Design-wise, the app’s icon and animated splash screen are lovely, but then things aready start to go wrong. The reader is taken to a screen showing that a new version of The Daily is being delivered, and the only choices are to sit and wait while looking at a summary of the weather conditions, or quit the app and leave. On the first launch of the day, this process takes over a minute in my experience. As John Gruber similarly complained on Daring Fireball, that’s like wrapping a traditional newspaper in a cellophane bag so well that when you’ve finally managed to get the wrapper off, your morning coffee has gone cold – totally unacceptable.

Once it does load, the app displays a carousel of page thumbnails. Sadly, these are poorly rendered shrunken images that exhibit lots of artefacts, or what a casual reader may simply perceive as noise. This affects both the text and the images on each page. In an age where HDTV is the norm, images that harken back to the colour-challenged web circa 1996 are, again, not something readers are going to accept in the long run. The scrolling of the carousel is not particularly responsive, and the animation is jumpy. To add insult to injury, I also found The Daily to be quite crashy.

As you browse through the pages, you are often greeted by a black page with a spinning wheel while the content loads. Though each of these loads only takes a second or so, it’s still an incredibly frustrating experience that breaks the reader’s attention and focus on the not-so-great content (more on that in a bit). I also found it irritating that, for an application that still very closely emulates the traditional page format (much moreso than, say, the Wired app), there are no page numbers to be found – just a straight line at the top of the display with a dot that gives you a relative idea of how far into the current edition you are. A few pages randomly scattered throughout the app have pages that are taller than the screen and can be scrolled, but it’s puzzling which pages receive this treatment and for what reason.

Some of the other features the app includes are the ability post comments (in typed or, bizarrely, audio form), share articles via e-mail or save them to for later reference. The app can be used in portrait or landscape orientation according to preference, and each page elegantly reflows to suit the format of the screen.

The Content

In a nutshell, it’s incredibly broad and shallow, with no real sense of coherence whatsoever. It’s quite disappointing really, considering the amount of emphasis placed on the fact that The Daily consisted of 100% original content, created specifically with this format in mind. I didn’t detect as obvious a right-side bias as I was expecting from the house of Fox, but it’s probably far too early to make any judgements on that anyway.

In my page-by-page survey of today’s edition, I found about 30 pages of what I would consider to be original content. The rest consisted of things like photos and video clipped grabbed from existing online sources and “enhanced” by a one-liner, or multi-page photo spreads, not to forget the omnipresent, annoyingly multimedial ads.

The tech section includes a 2-page “Ask the Editors” section, where readers can get painfully simplistic answers to questions so basic that fifteen seconds on google would have better served them. A whole page is dedicated to an iPhone case that looks like a mobie phone from the ’80 – anyone who follows popular tech blogs already glossed over this useless gimmick when it was circulated a week ago.

On a more fundamental level, it bothers me that a publication that aims to be a daily source of information has virtually no content that belongs in the context of a daily: no breaking events, Hell, there’s only a page-and-a-half on Egypt. The whole thing reads like a terribly watered-down newsweekly – and maybe even that analogy is giving it too much credit.

Closing Thoughts

To sum it up, I really don’t see what all the hype was about. I understand that this is a first attempt, but it’s one backed by one of the world’s largest media conglomorates and has been further supported behind the scenes by Apple in a way that I don’t believe any other third party app has been, and yet the execution of what is in principle a solid and straightforward concept has failed miserably.

Murdoch has managed to gain some significant publicity from his deal with Apple, but similar apps bound to overshadow The Daily in user interface, delivery and content quality are going to sprout in no time. Most of these will probably not attempt to take on The Daily, but instead focus on lucrative niches and target an audience that is defined by location or shared interests.

Overall, it just feels like The Daily fallen victim to the proverbial “jack of all trades, master of none”. Whether any major revisions will be made before the app goes from free trial to subscription-based payment once iOS 4.3 is released remains to be seen, but for iPad users today, there are already so many other ways of getting their daily fix of information and opinion that I simply don’t see this being a long term success.

…Then again, USA Today still sells about 2 million copies a day, so what do I know.

On the flight, I conveniently got the chance to move into a bulkhead aisle seat to make room for a family sitting together, which made for some welcome extra legroom. Air Canada’s seatback entertainment system actually worked for a change, and so I watched The International and Watchmen. The former was a decent conspiracy/action thriller, although to be honest I can’t even remember the cast (I know it was someone like, but not exactly Daniel Craig). The latter was really quite awful, and halfway through I started falling in and out of sleep, more out of boredom than exhaustion.

We made up time in the air and landed on time in Frankfurt. Although I had a few potential plans to spend some of my 6-1/2 hour layover with friends or family, it all fell through and I ended up taking the train into town and roaming around for a few hours. I was honestly surprised at what a nice city Frankfurt is. I got off the train at Hauptwache, which is central Frankfurt and an area with lots of shops, cafes, and walking distance to the river Main. In addition to the expected clusters of bank and insurance headquarters, there were lots of older buildings, churches, galleries and museums, as well as a large park that runs the length of the river in that part of the city. Best of all, the stopover gave me a chance to consume some of my favourite German goodies that you simply can’t get in North America, including Laugenbrötchen and Apfelschorle (bread boiled in saltwater prior to baking and apple juice with carbonated mineral water, respectively).

Back at the airport I moved through customs and security without a hitch and boarded my Lufthansa flight to Mumbai. Unfortunately this time there was no entertainment system, and the aircraft was quite a bit older. The fact that the crew were significantly more attractive only partially made up for the lack of amenities, and the chosen video running on the few tiny screens – a Discovery Channel documentary on the life or Meerkats – didn’t make the time pass any quicker.

I sat next to a gentleman that was actually from Pune, and was just returning from a trip to Sweden on business for a scandinavian software firm he worked for. He was very familiar with the area, including Magarpatta City, the gated live/work community a little east of central Pune where I am staying. We talked a little bit about offshoring, life in Toronto and travel, but I spent most of the time listening to a number of playlists I’ve created on my iPod over the years, some of which – incidentally – are in desperate need of a refresh. A few others, however, have stood the test of time surprisingly well.

Upon arrival in Mumbai, my bags took forever to come off the belt – Murphy’s law, I suppose. They did, however, eventually arrive, with only a small snag in one of the luggage tags to note. Finding my driver took some time as there are a number of different gathering points for prepaid cabs, regular transport, shuttle busses, etc. The ride to the hotel was quick and uneventful, although it gave me a first glimpse at the poverty and that is so prevalent everywhere here. The most striking thing in retrospect is that all the photos of the hotel on the Internet are shot from the second floor up, so as not to have to show the ground level barricade and secure entry gate, and the fact that a stone’s throw away from the building, people are sleeping by the side of the road, near makeshift shelters and among packs of stray dogs.

And that’s just from 45 seconds on the new site. I dare not even imagine what five minutes worth of feedback would look like.

[Updated 16:29] And here’s what Facebook had to say:

“to inform our future products”? That doesn’t even make sense. Argh.

Twitter’s beauty lies in its simplicity. It’s so simple in fact, that it’s downright restrictive. 140 characters is all you get to convey something coherent – be it insightful, entertaining or just plain random. Part of the fun is working within those narrow confines, tweaking the wording to make every character count and squeeze every last bit out of the “tweet”, as it were.

In a way, it evokes the nostalgia of the telecommunications of days gone by; pay-by-the-letter wire telegrams, or a single sheet of airmail paper. Those times are long gone of course, but Twitter has returned some of the joy of living with limitations.

Sure, there’s a lot if useless messages whipping around the ether. Hell, I “livetwittered” Miss Universe. But used with a little restraint, it can be almost poetic.

Besides, any writing is better than no writing, and with a few dozen more tweets, maybe the blog posts will start streaming from my thumbs after all.

philippe. ah, le mountie, ça va?

jens. hoi
oui oui, toi?

philippe. je suis un peut … euh comment se dit? müde

jens. fatigue

philippe. oui très fatigue

jens. je suis aussi

philippe. fatigué ?

jens. oui
pourquois nous parlons en francais aujourdui?

philippe. bien, tennons quelque chose ensemble
oui, ça c’est très fatigué aussi

jens. c’est un bon idee pour (umm, ueben…) le francais pour nous
(auch wenn’s eher kauderwelsch ist)

philippe. mais je veux changer tout le temp a l’espagnol

jens. Dans cette situation, andy tout le temps dit: “Que le fuck?!”

philippe. j’ai parlé avec [girl] ce matin

jens. Ah, bien! En francais aussi?

philippe. Andy dirait que c’est le grand caque
mais non, en espagnol naturellement

jens. Ah oui, “le grand caque”!
Mais pourquois en espagnol? Francais, c’est le langue de l’amour!

philippe. mais cette relation (jetzt fehlt mir das Präteritum von etre) avec [other girl]
pas avec [girl]
Erait (?!?) amicable (?!?!?!?)

jens.Ah, tabernac! Cette relation, un petit peu tout le temps, est avec tous les femmes.

philippe. Naturellement, le mountie save comment ça va!savoir
oops
le mot “savoir” est pour la recherche de internet

jens. Le “Internet”? Qu’est que c’est? Pour les ordinateurs?

philippe. que le f#$% do I know
mir wird’s jetzt zu anstrengend

To sum it up for those that couldn’t be bothered to read my endless ranting, I booked a rental car for a day through Priceline for a trip while in San Francisco. The return time for the rental was 11pm, as confirmed on the reservation & receipt, but when I tried dropping off the car at 10:30pm, the location was closed and had no after-hours drop-off. I had to park the car overnight for $25, and the next morning Avis acknowledged their mistake and offered to pay for the parking, but then proceeded to try charging me for the extra time I had use of the car. These are the e-mails that followed after not being able to resolve the issue on the spot with the agent:

[Submitted via Avis.com's online feedback form]

Hi,

I’m writing you with regards to a very frustrating experience renting a car from Avis a short while ago while on a weekend vacation in San Francisco.

Having never been to the area, we wanted to spend a day driving down the coast while we were there, so I put in a bid on a rental car using priceline.com. My first bid for a convertible was rejected as too low, so I adjusted the offer and was successful in getting a compact car for $45 plus taxes and fees. I received a confirmation e-mail from priceline and made sure that all the details were correct, including my desired time window of 7am-11pm on Saturday, August 4.

When picking up the car at just after 7am at the Post St location, I asked if there were any convertibles available that I could upgrade to, and agreed to pay an additional $40 for the use of a Pontiac Solstice. The rental agent, David, provided me with a copy of the rental agreement, which indicated the $40/day upgrade (which I initialled) and “estimated rental charges $73.93″. I have no idea how that number came about, but it was less than the $45+40+taxes+fees that I was expecting, so why complain?! He gave me the keys, reminded me that the car was due back by 7:25 the next morning (which is key to what comes next), and sent me on my way.

We spent a wonderful day exploring the California coast (and the sunburn to prove it), and returned to the Avis location at 10:40 that evening, only to find it closed (I later learned on the website that the location closed at 7pm, but nobody mentioned that to me earlier that day). I tried finding the after-hours dropoff, but no luck. My girlfriend put in a call to the customer service line, and was told bluntly “we don’t have after-hours drop-off at that location, you should have known that”. The agent was very rude. We were left with no choice but to park the car at our hotel.

I drove back to the Avis office the next morning to return the car, having had to change both the previous night’s plans as well as Sunday morning’s to accommodate this annoyance. I arrived at 8:05 and waited in line until 8:40. David, the same agent as the previous day, was at the counter when it was my turn. During this wait, I witnessed some of the worst treatment of customers I have ever seen. Aside from the unacceptable wait times, the most offensive moment was after a woman with an Australian accent who was asking for a map book was flippantly told she could try a bookstore. She left mumbling something like “this is ridiculous”. As the next customer stepped up to the counter, David made the following comment: “they all prisoners. that’s why they like that.”. Unbelievable.

Not wanting to get right into an argument over how not to treat customers, never mind fellow human beings, I explained the situation with the rental to him, and he said he had to talk to his manager about refunding the $25 I was going to be charged at the hotel for parking overnight. He disappeared into the garage for about five minutes, and upon his return said his manager had agreed to deduct the amount from the rental charges. He asked me for a receipt for the parking, which I could not provide, as I was not checking out of the hotel for another two days. David told me that they required a receipt, and I said that was fine, I’d drop it off once I checked out of the hotel — another inconvenience for sure, but partially understandable. That wasn’t good enough though, it had to be within 24 hours he said, as that’s when the rental gets “closed” on their system. After that, I would have to “go through corporate, and that will take months”. Always nice to find employees so confident in their own employers. Anyhow, I agreed to that as well, saying I would fax the receipt to the head office the following week and spend the following months anticipating my juicy $25 refund.

What happened next was the best part of all the incompetence so far: He advised me that my total charges were $107.87, in addition to the previous day’s rate, because I returned the car late. I had assumed (silly me) that their willingness to refund my parking expense was an acknowledgement of the problem with the opening hours, but not so. David couldn’t explain the logic, saying only “you are late”. I explained I was late because they were not open at the drop-off time indicated. He didn’t care, also telling me I should have been there when they opened that morning. Never mind over a half hour of time they were trying to charge me was for time I spent waiting in line, after having returned the car and handing the keys to one of the garage staff.

I asked to speak to a manager, and David called him. He said he was busy and did not have time to speak to me. I asked him to call him back and tell him I was not leaving before speaking with him, because my problem could clearly not be resolved without speaking to him, and was then told he would be five minutes. Fifteen minutes later, I asked Davis to call his manager again. The response this time was “he’ll be down when he’s finished”.

I had had it. It was now 9:15, I had spent over an hour at the Avis office that morning. I told David I was no longer waiting, and they would have to figure it out. He said he had to close the account and asked me for my credit card for the extra charges. I refused, saying I was not responsible for the charges, the reservation clearly stated an 11pm drop-off time and they were responsible for compensating me for the $25 parking charges. The best line of the day came then: “Sir, you are holding up our car, we can’t give it to someone else until I close the rental”. I have no idea what that means, but I again stated I was not going to provide my credit card nor authorize any further charges, and unless the manager was going to come down to speak to me that instant I was leaving. David said “ok”, so I left.

Sure enough, in addition to the original charge, my credit card was debited an additional $107.87 on August 7.

I request that you refund this charge plus the additional $25 in parking expenses occurred no later than Friday, August 24. If no satisfactory resolution is reached by then, I will request a chargeback with my credit card issuer.

The night before the deadline I’d given them to resolve this amicably, I received the following note from Avis, which clearly demonstrated that they didn’t care at all, not enough to actually respond to the points addressed in my e-mail, and especially not enough to offer a refund of any kind:

Dear Ms Hembach,

Thank you for contacting Avis via www.avis.com.

I do apologize for the delay in response to your e-mail. During peak periods our response times may be adversely affected.

When reviewing your final billing, we show you returned the vehicle the next morning at 0834 which we only give you a 29 minute grace period without any penalty. Because your rental was not due back till the next morning, technically we are not liable for any hotel parking ticket that accured.

As a courtesy, I have credited the $25.00, but you are still liable for the upgrade, taxes and surcharges for the upgrade and the additional hour charges.

We appreciate your business and thank you for choosing Avis.

Sincerely,

Jann Hill
Avis E-Mail Customer Service Department
custserv@avis.com
FAX: 918-621-4850

It’s not that I was actually expecting them to resolve the issue properly – I’ve dealt with too many incompetent companies to maintain that faith. This, however, was an impressive display of disregard for one’s own customers that warranted a final e-mail before getting in touch with Visa to initiate a chargeback on my credit card.

Hi.

While I appreciate your getting back to me at all, telling a paying customer “sorry it took so long, but when we get busy everything takes really long” (even if it’s in pseudo-professional corporate-speak… “peak periods”? “adversely affected”? Who writes these scripts? They need to get out more!) is ridiculous. I gave you more than a week to resolve this issue, and you chose not to respond until the very last minute. Anyways, that’s all beside the main point:

Your “resolution” is absolutely not acceptable. It doesn’t even make sense. Either you acknowledge the error is yours and refund all associated costs, or you assert that the error is mine, and that I am liable for all associated costs. Accepting responsibility for the parking fee but not the late return simply doesn’t follow any logic whatsoever.

First, I don’t know where you came up with the time of 8:34 for drop-off, but that’s irrelevant for now. Since you seem keen on discussing the technicalities of this issue, let me restate the issue very clearly here.

My reservation, which I handed a copy of to your agent David when I picked up the car, clearly stated a drop-off time of 11pm. He did not point out that the office would be closed or that there was no after-hours drop-off available. It’s as simple as this: It is because of your inaccurate information that I was unable to drop off the car at the time indicated on the confirmation, and I will not be held liable for any associated charges whatsoever.

I don’t know whether this booking error was yours or Priceline’s, and frankly I don’t care — that’s for you to sort out with them. As far as I’m concerned, I had a confirmed reservation constituting an agreement which you did not live up to, and which caused considerable inconvenience and cost to me.

In the interest of expedience, I have refrained from itemizing additional charges incurred due to to your company’s error, including additional gas and plans for both the evening of the 4th and morning of the 5th that I had to change… never mind the complete waste of time that dealing with your company in person, over the phone and via e-mail has been.

As originally indicated, I will be submitting all documentation to my credit card issuer tomorrow with a request to initiate a chargeback.

I am also taking the liberty of forwarding these e-mails along with the associated backup documentation to a number of parties, including consumerist.com and the California Department of Consumer Affairs in order to help avoid others from experiencing your company’s blatant disrespect for its customers.

On a final note, I’d like to offer a little hint for improving your company’s abysmal customer service and disregard for its paying customers (not that I expect anyone to be paying attention, as it’s clear from your response below that you didn’t read or care to respond to a number of specific points):

Maybe the next time you can’t determine a customer’s gender from their first name, you should either spend twenty seconds on google to figure it out, or just leave the title out entirely. Taking a random guess at it is unprofessional, confusing and, quite frankly, insulting. On the other hand, your disregard for cultural diversity as demonstrated not only by your gender-bender, but also your agent’s racist remarks about a customer in front of at least twenty other people (which I outlined in my original note but you obviously were not concerned enough about to address in your response) is hardly surprising at this point.

Jens Hembach

…that’s Mr Jens Hembach

I haven’t gotten a response to this message, nor do I expect to. I was too busy to get in touch with Visa yet but will be doing that later today, and will be posting more updates as the saga further unfolds.

What better way to get back on the blogging bandwagon than with an angry rant I say!

When I got home from work today I had an e-mail waiting from Busted Tees. I have two of their designs (this one and this one) and have had my eye on a few more for a while. Anyways, the latest edition to their shop was not remotely funny.

Playing off of all the publicity NFL star Michael Vick’s alleged involvement in a dog fighting ring in Virginia has been betting in the media, Busted decided to make a joke out of it. I can’t imagine who’s laughing. I couldn’t help but fire off the following e-mail to Busted’s sales department.

Hi,

I'm sure I'm not the first or last person to e-mail you about this, so I'll keep it brief. I've ordered a handful of tees from you and love most of your designs, but this latest release is in such poor taste that it might justify an all-out boycott of the site. Making light of something so gruesome is just inappropriate (don't get me wrong, I'm about as politically incorrect as they come, but there are and should be limits). What's next, pedophilia jokes? Oh wait, you already carry that too.

For what it's worth, I think the right thing to do here is listen to the voices of concern and outrage, admit that you made a bad judgement and ditch the design. Profiting from something so hideous (even if the shirt is, as you say, "anti-Michael Vik, not anti-dog" -- you'd think if you had the foresight to put a disclaimer explaining the shirt, you would have had second thoughts about putting it up at all) is at best bad karma and simply uncool.

Cheers, Jens.

Just a few minutes later, I received a response from Busted. I’d of course like to think that it was my e-mail that somehow triggered a reaction, but I’m fairly sure that mine was just one of many.

check out the site now and tell me if it changes your opinion.

[name removed]

And after just another couple of minutes, the page was updated to show this:

I gave it some thought, but it really didn’t change the fundamental objection I had, so I fired off one last note:

Hi [name removed],

I appreciate the quick note back, just noticed the updated page.

Please don't take this as some sort of crusade on my part, just my opinion: Donating $1.50 for every sold shirt is a nice gesture, no doubt about it. It doesn't really solve the fundamental problems though: You're still profiting from "someone" else's suffering (just because lots of media outlets do the same doesn't make it ok), and people who see others wearing this on the street are still going to chuckle, because that's what you're going for, and I just don't think that's right. Lastly, I don't think the ASPCA would even take the money knowing how it was raised - it would be a publicity nightmare for them.

I guess in the end it's a difference of opinion. Everyone has to draw the line somewhere, and bustedtees' ist just a bit further out than mine.

Regards, Jens.

Yes, I’m fully aware I choose to get angry at completely random things and not give a second thought to others – this was just one of former.

Cristiano
12:29
yap.
you still there?

jens. 12:29 where else would I be?

Cristiano 12:29 i am looking for chinese classes. do you think i should learn cantonese or mandarin?

jens. 12:30 dare I ask where this idea came from?

Cristiano 12:30 well, i wanted to learn arabic except i can't find any arabic classes

jens. 12:31 yeah, scratch that ,-) I say Mandarin

Cristiano 12:31 yeah, that's what i think too i can do business in HK with english

jens. 12:31 I agree And hey, it's a fruit

Cristiano 12:31 DUDE i had't even thought of that i am SO sold

jens. 12:31 See?! Aren't you glad you consulted your lifeline?!

Cristiano 12:32 TOTALLY ok, i'm gonna go play some piano

jens. 12:32 uh, ok

Cristiano 12:32 i am downloading mandarin software like, mandaringteach me software next time we speak, it will be in mandarin

jens. 12:33 excellent! I prefer mine in the form of a sorbet

But enough of that. I’m flying high above the atlantic ocean right now, though I can’t tell exactly where since location info on this flight isn’t provided by Apple’s fun flight widget for some reason.

That little missing detail, however, is definitely not going to spoil the sheer joy of being able to access the Internet at 40,000 feet, thanks to Lufthansa’s Connexion by Boeing implementation (they call it FlyNet). Add to that the bonus of flying business class and having a power outlet (regular jacks, no adapters required!) in your seat, and I have the ultimate tech travel setup right here.

The connection does drop occasionally, but overall it’s quite the positive experience. It’s broadband fast, and at $26.99 for the full duration of the flight, a fully worthwhile upgrade.

What fun have I had with my connection? Well, aside from the obligatory check of my blogs, e-mail and some chatting, I also had a video call with my brother using the new supersecret Skype beta video preview – how fun is that?! That’s me in the bottom left corner of the window. Even with my light turned on, the dark cabin renders me practically invisible. Ah well.

To round it all off, I’m streaming my music from my new mp3tunes locker. I’ll be writing a review of that some time soon, but it’s quite cool overall, if not perfect.

That’s all for now. I’m going to try and post regularly at least for the next two weeks, and maybe that’ll get me in gear and I can keep it up indefinitely.

• Free, open source
• Lots of plugins, actively developed
• Uses standard PHP
• My brother’s using it too

That last point is actually what finally triggered the move, since I’ve been spending quite a bit of time over the last few weeks helping him troubleshoot and enhance his new blog (soon to be housed at stylez.de.

Standard PHP is not quite as easy to use as Movable Type’s proprietary markup script, but it gives me the added benefit of learning a something that can be applied outside the blog engine, and hopefully lead to some added knowledge I can apply to my fledgling webdesign projects.

Over the coming days, I’ll be posting about the details of the move. If you like, you can follow along. The old MT blog is at blog.hembach.com, the new in-development WP blog at blogs.hembach.com. Once the move has been completed to my satisfaction, I’ll swap the WP installation over to the ‘blog’ subdomain and delete the old MT blog.

As of this post, there will be no new content added or changes made to the old site.

<

p>Dean Kamen himself cruised past me on a Segway while I was walking home from work today on Front St. As usual, I let the moment just pass and arrived home quite upset that I hadn’t stopped and asked for a photo. I’m sure quite a number of people have stopped him and asked about the Segway, but I’m quite sure very few if any of those people would have in fact recognized who they were speaking to.

<

p>I took a few minutes to google around and see if I could figure out what he was in town for, but didn’t find anything. It could be to check out the FIRST Robotics Competition, which he founded in 1989, or maybe it was to speak with city council about how municipal by-laws would deal with the Segway — who knows.

<

p>Today was the release of their latest product: 1K Brix Macrofig, a 7″ tall plastic figure limited to only 50 units, the most exclusive run so far.

<

p>Having specifially planned to be at my desk in time to get the page set up and continually reload the page like a trained monkey in the minute leading up to the 9pm launch, I was very excited at the chance to pick one of these up.

<

p>When the cart became available I quickly added 2 units (the maximum quantity per person), proceeded to pay via PayPal, and only a few moments later I received my confirmations – woohoo! I’d done it! I had secured 4% of the total world production of this cool product for myself!

<

p>Shortly after midnight though, I got an e-mail from PayPal notifying me that a full refund had been issued to me (e-mail address removed):

Dear Jens Hembach,

PodBrix (XXXXXXX@podbrix.com) has issued you a full or partial refund for your payment.

Please do not reply to this email. Email sent to this address cannot be answered.

Temporary Hold Information: A temporary hold has been placed on funds that were returned to your account because you used Instant Transfer to fund the original payment. The funds from this payment cannot be released until they have arrived from your bank account, which usually takes 3-4 business days.

Message From Seller:
Refund for PodBrix Order

<

p>Who knows what that was supposed to mean. I figured it was a problem with debiting my chequing account, so I sent out another payment, this time from my credit card.

<

p>Thinking everything was alright, I was getting ready to head to bed when I spotted this while paging through my spam folder:

PodBrix Customer,

You purchased a 1K Brix Macrofig from us a few hours ago. As you may have noticed the 1K Brix Macrofig sold out very quickly… in less than 45 seconds actually. This was partially due to the popularity of the product and partially because we had such a low run of 50 units.

Unfortunately because of the fast selling rate, our shopping cart software was unable to halt orders quickly enough after they exceeded 50 units. Basically we received so many orders so quickly (many in the first few seconds) that some later orders slipped through because the early orders were still in process and had not been removed from inventory yet. This meant that when everyone finally finished the checkout we ended up with too many orders. To make a long story short, we oversold the limited edition of 50 units by 18 units.

We are therefore forced to cancel orders for the last 18 units we sold. Your order is unfortunately one of these orders.

Not that it means much, but let me start by apologizing. I am aware that you may have stayed up till the middle of the night (depending on your time zone) waiting to buy the 1K Brix Macrofig. Certainly I can imagine your disappointment at receiving this e-mail. I am personally very sorry to have to cancel your order and we would like to try and make it up to you in some way.

Because of your inconvenience and disappointment we will offer you a guaranteed purchase on up to two units of the next PodBrix product to be released. We have some amazing new items in the works. I can’t speak specifically about what the next product will be, but a few days before the release we will send you a special e-mail and allow you to purchase up to two units before any other customers. If you decide you don’t like the next product, you can wait and apply this offer to any subsequent product. We will continue to e-mail you the option to pre-buy until you select a product you might like… or tell us to go away.

Again I apologize for your disappointment. You will receive an e-mail confirmation of your refund. If you paid via PayPal your payment will be refunded to your PayPal account. If you paid using credit card the charge will be refunded to your card.

If you have any further questions you can feel free to reply to this e-mail and I will respond personally to your concerns.

–
Tomi
http://PodBrix.com

<

p>I cannot begin to put into words how upset I am. Not managing to place the order in the mad rush to be one of the lucky 50, that’s one thing, but getting a confirmation e-mail, only to be told three hours later “oops, my bad”?!? Argh. Granted, Tomi wrote up a very nice e-mail, but first dibs on one of the next products isn’t exactly what I’d call ‘making it up’ — I do still have to pay for them, no? How about a free 1K Brix Classic-T? That one’s not limited, where’s the harm? The 18 T-shirts needed probably don’t cost as much in total to manufacture as the sale price of just a single one of the ‘Macrofigs’. Sorry, I’m sounding like a bit of a ranting lunatic.

<

p>The fair thing to do here would actually be to look at all 68 units that were allowed through, and limit the orders to one figure per order instead of two, working backwards from the last order, until enough people’s second figures were taken away to guarantee everyone that managed to get an order in before the cutoff at least one of the figures.

<

p>Between this fiasco and the fact that one of the two Wozwear 6502 T-shirts I bought a while back has a stain on it from sloppy printing, I’m going to be very reluctant to order from PodBrix again. They make some very cool looking stuff, but the artificial exclusivity seems to come at the price of the quality of both the product and the service, which is simply not cool.

<

p>Before finally heading to bed, tired and frustrated, I responded to Tomi at PodBrix with this note:

Hi Tomi,

I’m sure I’m not the first to write you that I am extremely upset about this, and will undoubtedly not be the last either. Technical issues aside, would it not be a more equitable resolution to reduce those orders of 2 macrofigs to one, likely freeing up enough to at least guarantee one figure to all those that put in orders before the system shut down? Otherwise you’re putting ebay resellers before true fans and collectors, which just doesn’t seem right.

Regardless, not that it will make a difference either way, but I have to say I’m quite disappointed, especially after my last purchase from PodBrix — 2 Wozwear shirts — didn’t work out too well either, with one of the shirts having unsightly white splotches of printing colour along the bottom.

Regards,
Jens Hembach

[Update: 2006-04-07 23:57]

<

p>The saga continues. Tomi just sent out this e-mail. I’m quite pleased to see my suggestion was at least taken seriously, it does restore some of my lost confidence.

Hello Again,

I have received several suggestions on how to resolve the issue with cancelled orders due to overselling on the 1K Brix Macrofig product. Let me summarize the suggestions and respond.

–

Suggestion:
Why don’t you simply increase the limited edition to 68 units and allow all everyone to purchase?

Answer:
We can’t do this because I planned for 50 units and we only have enough parts to create 50. Technically there are 50 and 1 prototype unit.

Suggestion:
Why don’t you offer non-numbered units to the people who you oversold to?

Answer:
Same as above. We don’t have enough parts.

Suggestion:
Why don’t you reduce any current orders for 2 units down to 1 unit. This way you would have enough units for everyone to get at least one.

Answer:
I thought about this, but only three people ordered 2 units. Everyone else ordered one, probably due to the high cost of the product. Two of the people who ordered 2 units have already had their orders cancelled. So this wouldn’t work unfortunately.

Suggestion:
Couldn’t you just cancel all orders, then allow only everyone who previously purchased including the oversold orders to vie again for purchase, but limit the sale to 1 unit each.

Answer:
This is very difficult logistically and would still leave 18 units oversold and make people unhappy. I know those people might not be you… but it would be someone else.

–

In conclusion I thought hard about how to resolve the situation and I feel the current solution is the best we can do given the circumstances. I know it is incredibly disappointing and if I were in your position I would certainly feel angry and let-down.

I know you are not very satisfied with the idea of having the first stab at subsequent products. But I assure you that the upcoming products will be more desirable than the 1K Brix Macrofig… and they won’t be a big Woz or something of that nature.

Given the information I have provided you, if there is anything else we can do to make you happy let me know.

–
Tomi
http://PodBrix.com

<

p> Shortly after I bought my PowerBook about two years ago, I started looking for a suitable mouse. The selection at the time was slim, but I finally decided on DV Forge’s The Mouse BT (now built and sold by Chwang Yi). I mainly decided on this model based on the smooth scroll wheel, and the fact that the design matched that of Apple’s own bluetooth mouse closely while adding a right button and middle button / scroll wheel.

<

p>While the tracking and scrolling on The Mouse BT have been flawless, and reconnection after sleep / losing the bluetooth connection is pretty fast, there have been two substantial flaws that started annoying me increasingly over the last months: battery life seems extremely short, and button clicks often trigger the other button as well. This is due to the single-piece top case of the mouse. I can only speak for my particular model, but if I click solidly on the left button, the right button will also be depressed. While this may not immediately seem like a problem, it becomes a real hassle when you start using things like Firefox’s wonderful Mouse Gestures plugin.

<

p>Chwang Yi’s site says that The Mouse BT has undergone constant improvement since its release two years ago, but they make reference only to the bluetooth wireless performance, not the physical build quality issues.

<

p>When looking at the current offerings, I was surprised to find there was still very little available. Both Microsoft and Logitech didn’t seem to offer anything compelling, although Logi is selling the basic V270.

<

p>The smallest mouse I could find was IOGEAR’s Bluetooth Optical Mini Mouse. Aside from the size, it also has a smooth-scrolling wheel and rechargeable AAA batteries. The batteries can be charged in the mouse using the included USB cable, even while the mouse is in use.

<

p>Solid features aside, the primary feature is also the biggest drawback: the size. I liked the mouse overall, although the design isn’t exactly inspiring, but the mouse is so narrow that any extended use is painful – my wrist started stinging after just 20 minutes.

<

p>My next attempt was Microsoft’s IntelliMouse Explorer for Bluetooth. Unlike many other BT mice, Microsoft’s offering came complete with a bluetooth dongle for use with computers that do not have integrated bluetooth wireless — a nice touch, since such an adapter can cost up to $60 if purchased alone.

<

p>

<

p>Feature-wise, this again looked like a great choice: sidescrolling wheel / middle button, and two additional buttons on the left side if the mouse, which can easily be mapped to OS X’s Expose, for example.

<

p>Although Microsoft makes no mention of this, and it was hard to find any information elsewhere online as well, I can confirm that the IntelliMouse does in fact work under Mac OS X and is recognized without the need for any software installation.

<

p>Unfortunately, the MS mouse had its drawbacks as well: although I didn’t have the mouse long enough to test battery life properly, the lack of rechargeable batteries just doesn’t seem up-to-date. Worse though, tracking performance was simply miserable. I was actually quite surprised. Although this is one of the older bluetooth products available, tracking speed/resolution was unacceptable, and when coming out of sleep mode, the mouse would react erratically.

<

p>Now close to simply settling with my existing The Mouse BT, I decided to give it one more go and picked up Macally’s BTMICRO, and I’m very glad I did. Although this is also a miniature formfactor mouse, it’s nearly twice as wide as IOgear’s, and I experienced none of the wrist pain or fatigue. The mouse also comes with rechargeable batteries as well as a charging cradle. Tracking speed is excellent, and the buttons have a solid feel. The scrollwheel is of the clieking variety, which I had no problem adjusting to. My only complaint is that clicking the middle button requires a little more pressure than I would prefer, but overall, I am very happy with this mouse, and will be using it full-time now.

We are writing to inform you that TELUS has received a complaint that alleges that your TELUS Internet Service account has been involved in copyright infringement. This complaint was traced back to your account based on the IP address used at the time of this activity.

Please note that TELUS has not provided any of your personal account information to the complainant. It is TELUS’ policy to disclose such information to a complainant only if ordered to do so by a court of law, which has not happened to date.

We do, however, want you to be aware that this complaint was received by us and offer you the following information that may be of help to you:

<

p>I’m not exactly sure what activity they are referring to, or who the complainant is, which would be very interesting to know.

<

p>I gerenally don’t download any pirated material for a number of reasons (including the fact that I couldn’t be bothered to download movies, and I don’t care to download music since I obsessively collect CDs, but that’s a topic for another post). Now I’m no lawyer, but as I understand, downloading copyrighted materials online is currently not illegal in Canada, which leads me to believe that this notice is due to sharing/uploading. I find that confusing, since I’m too much of a freeloader, and too reluctant to get in some sort of trouble, to be sharing my music library online.

<

p>I’ve lived in one of the buildings in Toronto’s CityPlace development for about 2-1/2 years, and one of the great perks is access to Telus’ 100Mbps network, which includes a number of ethernet jacks right in the apartments — no modems, no routers (unless you want one), just straight network goodness.

<

p>Just how great is Telus’ residential Internet service at CityPlace? Well, I just ran a quick test at BroadbandReports.com

dslreports.com speed test result on 2006-04-03 17:09:09 EST:

5590 / 2916

Your download speed : 5590 kbps or 698.8 KB/sec.
That is 258.1% better than an average user on telus.net

Your upload speed : 2916 kbps or 364.5 KB/sec.
That is 442% better than an average user on telus.net

<

p>Fun, huh? It’s just a snapshot, I haven’t yet bothered to run a number of tests at different times to get a more solid idea of actual, consistent performance.

<

p>Anyways, what it comes down to is this: I love my Telus internet service, and I’m going to be more careful to make sure that my computers aren’t serving up any copyrighted content starting right now.