Archive for April, 2007

HP sucks; the money from my wallet

Published April 30th, 2007 in uncategorized. 0 Comments

I have a expensive HP Laser Printer, it even has an ethernet socket, and keeps my office whirring. Recently the cyan has been getting watery, so the once vibrant red has become orange. When printing profit and loss sheets the red is just not as intense as it needs to be.


I tried the usual printer solutions :)

  • Turned printer it on and off using the soft button
  • Turned printer it on and off by physically unplugging the cable
  • Cleaned the printer using the windows drivers
  • Replaced the cyan toner cartridge with a new one
  • Flashed it with newer data
  • Printed to it by USB instead of ethernet

But nothing improved the print quality. Fortunately the printer was still covered by the standard 1 year HP warranty. After a few emails they sent a word document (aggh) with a RMA number or “Bench Repair Reference” in HP parlance. However the address of HPs outsourced repair centre was 200km away from me. I had to find a box and bubble wrap and pack the printer for posting, at my own expense. It cost about EUR 42.


Meanwhile in the office I blew the dust off the indestrucable HP Deskjet 500, connected it to the parallell port of one computer that had an internal IP. I bought a few cartridges - yes you can get anything on eBay - and while being slower it did the job.


A couple of weeks later - beyond the quoted 10 days - I heard from the repair centre had finished doing whatever they do, and it was sitting in their office ready for collection. Collection? yes I had to arrange the transportation, now it was bad enought that I had to pay for it to be sent, and now sent back, but as every businessman knows there are some things that are unavoidable so I took out my company Visa and told them, ok, reluctantly I would pay. But they were not interested, they don’t bring things to the post office, I had to send someone there to collect it.


I visited the websites of the acronym couriers - UPS, DHL, TNT et al - only the former had an arrange collection web form. So I filled in the “from” address, weight of package, and pressed submit. I selected the payment method as “Credit Card”, and pressed submit. That was it, a collection reference number was displayed, but there was no space for me to enter my credit card number. UPS assume a person at the “from” address would show the driver a credit card, but in fact it was me at the “to” address that wanted to pay. So I phoned the UPS free phone number and cancelled the collection. I then phoned another courier, and because I was on the phone, not constrained by the existance of form fields I was able to explain my situation and leave my credit card number on file in their office.


There are alot of lessons to be learned here.

  • Always keep a few empty cardboard boxes and bubble wrap around, they come in handy
  • When you buy the latest printers, monitors etc, keep a couple of the old ones as backups.
  • When creating a web form, always add a “Comment” form field, and make it a large multi-line one
  • If you work in a call centre, adjust you headset so that your voice is louder then the background noise
  • If you job involves repairing things please understand that everyone you deal with is already annoyed that their item broke, do not make things worse with an attitude

Continue reading ‘HP sucks; the money from my wallet’

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Nissan.com domain dispute

Published April 28th, 2007 in arbiter, nissan, domain dispute, wipo and uncategorized. 1 Comment

Nissan Motors, the Japanese car manufacturer, is suing Mr Uzi Nissan, the current owner of nissan.com, for USD 10 million. Mr Nissan registered nissan.com in 1994, as a home page for his company Nissan Computer Company, which he founded in 1991.


Nissan Motors may have missed the Internet boat on the Internet in 1994, but by 2002 they started their outboard engine and caught up. The legal battle has been brutal, according to Mr Nissan, who is convinced that Nissan Motors is determined to bankrupt him.


Mr Nissan clearly has a right to the domain name as his last name is Nissan, and that is not because he changed it by deed poll (unlike the infamous Mr Oxford University) the Nissan surname stretches back at least two generations. Yet Nissan Motors also have a right to the domain name, as their name is Nissan. Who will win?


Well Nissan Motors has charged in court that Mr Nissan is a cybersquatter, a speculator intent on cashing in on Nissan Motors’ brand. So far Nissan Motors has lost on this point, although the company has had some success in its related claim that Nissan Computer Company is infringing on Nissan Motors’ business by directing traffic to automotive-related advertisers.


Mr Nissan also has the domain nissan.net


A WHOIS search conducted by Ambrand Dot Com shoes that Nissan Motors does at least own nissan.org, but it appears they don’t want it as it goes to a parking page.


It is nice to see that despite the court rulings Mr Nissan still owns the domain, even though he is limited in what content he can display there.
Continue reading ‘Nissan.com domain dispute’

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Eat your own dog food

Published April 28th, 2007 in salesmanship, after sales service, staff, support, customer support and uncategorized. 0 Comments

To say that a company “eats its own dog food” means that it uses the products that it makes.




It is used in the software industry, for example, Microsoft emphasises the use of its own software products inside the company. Dogfooding improves software quality, because the developers best able to fix bugs are likely to be personally confronted with them. It’s also a means of conveying the company’s confidence in their products, imagine the public relations nightmare if emerged that Apple’s iPod team all used Zunes, or if the Google Search team used Yahoo! for their personal surfing.


I believe that every employee should eat the dog food of its employer. I used to work in a Hotel and sometimes guests would ring the front desk asking how to make the air conditioning quieter. Many of the staff has no idea, but I eat the dog food and knew the minutae of the system and which buttons to push. This sort of information is not demonstrated on induction days, or printed in manuals, it only comes from practical experience, we are all familiar with the cliche “practice makes perfect”, well gosh darnit its true after all.


Yet so many employees have only a basic knowledge of their employers products and services. Years ago, of course, when companies were smaller an employee was likely to be the owner, and so he made sure to know about all his products and services because his income depended on it.


Recently I renewed a domain with an unnamed Irish company, I logged into the control panel and saw the amount due, and clicked pay, as the company does not accept my favourite credit card (American Express) I elected to pay by a bank transfer instead. I then emailled the accounts@companyname.com telling them the narrative and invoice number. But it soon became obvious that the employee who replied did not eat his own dog food. He sent my username and password for the contol panel and said there is where I could renew the domain. Yawn, it made me want to “walk away” to the company, the only thing that made me write the long email explaining what he needed to do was the fact that I had already paid. In bricks and mortar stores people can actually walk away.

If your employees do not eat your own dog food then how can you make it more palatable? Well it dependes on the product, if you make cars then offer them a company car, if you sell suits then given them a staff discount, but in all industries there is one sure fire way, its called commission. If your employees have an actual stake in your business, via if their pay packet depends on how successful your business is then they will have an incentive to perform. Continue reading ‘Eat your own dog food’

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I hate Realplayer and Quicktime

Published April 24th, 2007 in youtube and uncategorized. 1 Comment

We have all been in the situation, you visit a webpage that has some content of an audio/visual variety, and you are presented with a choice of file formats. What will it be sir? Realplayer, Quicktime, or Windows Media Player.

  • RealPlayer (ah no due to my last windows reinstall it has not associated itself with the filetype, so I’ll have to load it from the Program Files directory, no thats some bloatware, ah thats the main .exe, sit while it fetches it bloated media welcome page, then open the URL, and wait while it buffers and possible times out)
  • Quicktime (ah no did I install that bloatware yet, em oh yes there is the annoying icon by the clock, ok lets click ah no whats that ahrd drive trashing about, oh it demonstrating Parkinson’s law by loading the file in a way that uses all the RAM regardless of how much it has)
  • Windows Media Player (it is installed by default, and even if its not the latest version it will actially update, but its made by Microsoft)
  • Flashplayer (excellent it will always work)


Why doesn’t everyone make their content available via a Flash player? YouTube do, and I think that is the secret of their success, it just simply works. There was a time I’ll admit, when I enjoyed configuring the other players to actually work, for example back in the hazy days of 1995 on Windows 3.11 (for Workgroups!) I used Quicktime to view JPGs. But then again I had no alternative.


This bring me to he success of YouTube, there are many reasons for its success, even in 1995 I people exchanged funny videos of cats playing pianos in AVI format, and most recent commentators have reaffirmed their enjoyment at viewing same even today, they call it social networking or em web2.0 or something, but how come there is not more praise for the Flash player. Continue reading ‘I hate Realplayer and Quicktime’

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Columbo

Published April 22nd, 2007 in french, comedy, video and uncategorized. 0 Comments


I don’t understand everything they are saying (my French is not what is used to be) but the Columbo impersonator has the mannerisms spot on. Actually, its amazing how much the cigar adds to Columbo (but of course, dear readers, smoking is bad for you). Continue reading ‘Columbo’

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Calvin Harris

Published April 19th, 2007 in calvin harris, MTV, ambrand, music and uncategorized. 1 Comment

Continuing in my audiorial quest for the sweetest 80s synthesizer sounds this week I have mostly been listening to Calvin Harris. (his myspace page has a flash player with a few tracks)
His name is by now familiar to most thanks to populatity of the debut single “Acceptable in the 80s” which recently reached No 10 on the UK Singles Chart, receiving coverage on the radio and music channels such as MTV.

His next single “The Girls” is scheduled for release at the end of May.

Harris uses an unashamed British accent on his tracks, like a Male Sophie Ellis-Bextor, and this is to be admired as so many singers put on the same American accent. Although Harris does not use the thick Scottish accent perhaps as he could never equal the Proclaimers dualing vocal chords.

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Digiweb Offers Free Hosting & a Free Domain

Published April 19th, 2007 in ambrand and uncategorized. 2 Comments

Digiweb is a company on the move, the move upwards. It recently acquired the 088 phone prefix and plans offering a mobile phone service, it also recently started hosting boards.ie (my second favourite website), and today I learned that it is offering Free Hosting (1 year, 2GB storage, 15GB xfer month) and a Free Domain (1 year, new domain in the gTLDs of com/net/org/info/biz and it seems theccTLD of ie also).


Sounds good but what are the catches?

  • It’s for Third-level students only (however in practice the only proof they ask for is an email address at that colleges domain, and my alma mater of UCC, at least, allows graduates to keep their college email address indefinitely, someone didn’t do their homework, but Digiweb are not the only Irish company to rely on the existance of an email address as proof of a current affiliation, Software4Students which is a reseller of Microsoft Student versions does the same).
  • Not for commercial use. (so that novel PHP website you starting thinking about when you say the headline might put together cannot have Adsense on the periphery)
  • After the year ends who will own the domain? (if its a .ie you can use the quill and pen/fax method to take it over from the IEDR directly, but if its a gTLD you will have to dance to Digiweb’s tune, and to continue the metaphor I don’t know what their CD collection looks like, but it will likely be easy-listening as they do use hsphere)


Continue reading ‘Digiweb Offers Free Hosting & a Free Domain’

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Taxi Regulator

Published April 19th, 2007 in taxi, hackney, fianna fail and uncategorized. 5 Comments

In Ireland there are two types of cab.


The Taxi - can be hailed in any public place, requested at an office, rank, or by phone.
The Hackney - cannot be hailed, must be requested at an office or by phone.


Taxis are found in the large cities; Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway etc. but for the rest of the country, and here I’m talking about both provincial towns and villages a Hackney is yer only man.


A Hackney licence or “plate” is cheaper to buy then a Taxi so in these areas of less business where there is only weekend and occasional demand it allows an enterprising local man to have a side business. He can use the car as a daily driver when not on duty as - and this is a key point for non-Irish readers - the car only displays a small yellow badge on the front and rear bumpers, this is discreet, it does not have to have disctinctive paintwork as in London, or New York.


The Minister for Transport established the Commission for Taxi Regulation - which now seems to call itself the Taxi Regulator - this is yet another Independent Public Body established by the current Fianna Fail government, in a move to shift work away from Departments and thus named Ministers, so that should trouble arise it will be a faceless body that is blamed and not a named Minister or party, although I am taking the most negative view here there are doubtless some benefits to be had.


Returning now to the Hackney badge, while it was discreet is was a symbol that waiting passengers could easily see, assuring them they were indeed getting into a licenced hackney and not some strangers car. It also had a real-world function of alerting other road users that the car was a Hackney, and thus likely to drive in a rather fluid manner - pulling in to a curb without indicating, racing to traffic lights, and driving in a manner that we all would if our incomes depended on constant punctuality. However the Taxi Regulator has decided to replace these bumper plates with yellow windscreen stickers. These are not easily seen as in Ireland cars already display a myriad of stickers on their windscreens; Tax Disc, Insurance Certificate, National Car Test Certificate, and often a strip of advertising text above the three part holder for the aforementioned, also an awaiting passenger cannot scan the windscreen of passing cars for the presence of this sticker without inadvertently making eye contact with a person therein - a definate faux pas in undesirable areas.


* the word man is used above for the sake of previty to refer to a homo sapien of either sex. Continue reading ‘Taxi Regulator’

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Marty Robbins

Published April 19th, 2007 in country and western, MTV, music and uncategorized. 1 Comment

The Who’s 2006 album “Endless Wire” includes a song entitled “God Speaks, of Marty Robbins.” The song’s composer, Pete Townshend, explains that the song is about God’s deciding to create the universe just so he can hear some music, “and most of all, one of his best creations, Marty Robbins.”


Marty Robbins (1925 – 1982) was one of the most popular and successful American country and western singers of his era. For most of his nearly four decade career he was rarely far from the country music charts. Several of his songs also became pop hits. He recorded many pleasing bob-along melodies with a tear in his voice and a smile on his face




Singing the blues



Time goes by



Call me up



Don’t let me hang around



Pretty words



Gossip



Lucky Lucky Someone Else



I can’t quit


At The End of a Long Lonely Day



Devil Woman



El Paso
Continue reading ‘Marty Robbins’

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More 80s music

Published April 18th, 2007 in 80s music, MTV and uncategorized. 0 Comments


Pointer Sisters - Automatic (1984)


Ah the sweet sounds of the synthesizer, but a disspointing video, it looks like there is going to be a robot dance, but it never happens. Continue reading ‘More 80s music’

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