geek

Syncing your S60

brad — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:16:49 +0200

Recently I upgraded my phone to a Nokia N81. I set up my Zyb account, and sync'd my contacts, and realised that I could not schedule syncs like I had with my SE w810i. Until this morning, when Russell pointed out on IRC that there was a tool for that exact thing: Swim is a utility for automatic periodic synchronization of data with internet servers. It is part of the opensource project called Bergemot. The only hurdle is that you have to get the SIS file signed by the Open Signed Online and when you install it you are presented with a warning that your phone may turn into a lump of metal because you are using Software In Development. Works fine for me though.

Telkom is awesome.

brad — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:57:58 +0200

In a week we are moving houses. We have a list of things that need to be sorted before we move. So, one of the things on the list is moving our phone line/ADSL. I have a one price ADSL from cybersmart so I can take advantage of their Night Rider plan. Little did I know, paying for our ADSL portion from another supplier was something Telkom Just Couldn't Handle during a transfer.

I phoned Telkom's 10219 number, and was told I needed to call a random number to have the transfer done, because there was an ADSL linked to it. So we tried the cybersmart route. Mandy phoned and asked if we could have the line moved. Cybersmart wasn't so sure. So, we tried Telkom again. After some lengthly discussions Telkom came back with the point that the ISP has to initiate the move. So, back to cybersmart. This time cybersmart was helpful, and said I just needed to fax them my details and request, and they could go ahead, provided they had my signature. Cybersmart phoned back a few days later to tell me the fax was quite light, so they couldn't make out much. After chatting to the very helpful cybersmarter, she said she could transfer the ADSL portion back to Telkom, and then I could handle the transfer, and once it was complete Cybersmart could migrate the line back. Convoluted, but Telkom understandable. Took a few days, but today the migration went through, and round 2 started.

I phoned Telkom, and the very helpful call centre person started to sort me out. No charges, just time. I thought I was on the home run. Then I pointed out that the line had an ADSL on it, and I wouldn't mind having the number changed. Apparently it costs R543.23 to transfer an ADSL line between premises. WHAT? But, doing a self-install of ADSL costs R0.00. So, after some protracted negotiations, the path became clear:

Cancel my ADSL portion ("downgrade" my line), transfer to the new premises (and because there is no ADSL associated I can roll in a phone number change), once the line is active in the new house, then I can re-initiate the ADSL portion for free. WOW.

It's like peeling layers off an onion, and then putting the onion back together. Through all of this the call centre people were lank nice and helpful, but the system gets me down.

Just to re-cap, to have ADSL and a phone line moved to my new house (which is about 1km away from my old one) I have to:
Instruct Cybersmart to migrate my ADSL back to Telkom, Ask Telkom to cancel my ADSL, Ask Telkom to move my phone line to my new house, Wait for the new line, Ask Telkom to "upgrade" my line to include ADSL, transfer the ADSL back to Cybersmart. Awesome system guys.

Responsible reporting (or, sorry for being a doos, ClickThinking)

brad — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:23:27 +0200

Yesterday I posted about how a local web company recently sold the work of a well known, local, independent web professional. What they did broke netiquette, ethics, and definitely copyright law. Much geek froth and outrage occurred, and a tiny storm broke out on the internet. I jumped on the bandwagon with my post because:

I have SIWOTI syndrome
Content climbs higher on google when lots of reputable sources link to what is considered to be definitive text. Whijo is considered to be somewhat of a reputable source by google, and because I use the best CMS on the internet google likes reading what I am writing, so I wanted to contribute to improving Coda's rank on google for this subject
My goal is to improve the quality of the South African web, and improvement/evolution comes when the economy/environment favours better products, and denounces poor product. I denounced poor product

The only problem is that sometimes success quickly exceeds expectation, and in this case, after google crawled whijo.net, my article (then entitled 'Do not use the services of ClickThinking') landed on the first page of results. Coda's much more democratic 'What were you thinking, ClickThinking?' reached higher on the first page of results, as it should have. So, geek-google-penis aside, the weight of what I had done (measured in the internet based ISO standard of LOLCATS, or Lc) struck me. I know it is all a storm in a tea cup, but a post with a title as venomous as that sticks around, and ultimately may take business from them (and I am in no position to decide if their poor form deserves to take business away from them). I had behaved like a Journalist (well, one who didn't do too well in the media and ethics course). I thought up a catchy headline, and published it with a self-congratulatory click. I guess it comes back to thinking before doing, and not being a turd on the internet. So I changed the title, and when the site is re-crawled it will have a new title which is a lot closer to the heart of the matter at hand, and a lot less sensationalist.

Sometimes my powerful Sense For Injustice conspires with my Sense For Bad Web Development, and I peak too soon, type before I think, and end up looking childish, and not accomplishing my goals. I am usually calm and rational, but some things short circuit over that calm, rational, ethical brain. So, in summation, I apologise to ClickThinking for going too far off the handle, but I still deplore what they did.

As an aside, should I really be able to get into the first page of results on google for a company that just won a web analytics award?

Bad move, ClickThinking

brad — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:30:40 +0200

I was excited this morning when I read on Green Cars about Optimal energy's re-designed website. They recently launched their electric car the 'Joule'. Except when I clicked through to the optimal energy site it looked awfully familiar. Apparently this didn't escape Damien Du Toit (the owner of the coda identity). Apparently the background image is a direct copy paste probably even ends up as the same hash.

It is completely despicable, unethical, immoral. I am sure optimal energy are unaware of what ClickThinking did, but I hope they get wind of it.

I suppose it should be unsurprising that ClickThinking also uses javascript to add onclick events to their 'navbar' made of div's, instead of, I dunno, anchors? Is HTML still HTML if you don't actually make use of anchors?

UPDATE: Based on the comments below and re-reading the above paragraph, I realise it is not clear that when I rip into the JS menu I am talking about the JS menu on ClickThinking, not the menu on Optimal Energy site

UPDATE: Changed the title of the post to be less venomous. Was "Do not use the services of ClickThinking".

Social norms on teh internets

brad — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:12:39 +0200

So, I have been on teh internets for a while, I have been a member of many mailinglists, chatted on irc, etc. etc. So maybe I have a more attuned sense of the social norms of the internet. Years ago a bunch of script kiddies had a mailing list called KiDDiESoc, KiDDiESoc was great, at it's peak it had traffic in the region of 100 messages per day. Between maybe 15 people. Many of these messages were what can only be called spam. Spam and baggy pantsing. We had arguments about top, bottom, and inline posting. We argued, we joked, but mostly, (in my opinion) it was a space to share ideas, and explore the social norms of electronically mediated discussion and socialisation. There were other good things, but for me, we all definitely learned how to be better internet citizens for it. Lessons like:

Be as clear as possible in what you write (especially when arguing) because a lot of subtlety is lost when reading characters on a blinking terminal
Be respectful of people's boundaries, because it is a lot easier to overstep the mark
Try to remain calm and don't vent against someone personally if you are annoyed at their argument
Try at all times to keep the signal to noise ratio as high as possible

There are many more that exist, are unspoken, or are jotted down in RFCs and random pages on the intertubes. What I am getting at is that, like my finely tuned sense of justice, I have a finely tuned sense of the social norms that dictate my interactions on the web.

In a few days time the Digital Citizens Indaba is happening in Grahamstown. Last year I was involved in the indaba, and so my name would have been associated with it (quite possibly on a facebook group or something). So a few weeks ago a guy by the name of With Held* sent me a friend request, with a note saying "Hi there ,I'M looking forward in seeing you at the Digital Citizen Indaba this year.I will be coming with Ramon Thomas.". Now, I am not a fan of Ramon Thomas you are welcome to google him, and look at his website, and even meet him to create your own opinions. Either way, that friend request annoyed me, because it was unsolicited, and, if we deconstruct "friend request" we see that it contains the word "friend". According to that wikipedia link, "'Friendship' is a term used to denote co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more beings". I do not claim that every "friend" on my "friend list" is exactly in that box, but both people involved in those transactions have deemed the relationship as mutually beneficial, and justified. I have never met With Held, I probably will never meet With Held, I am not friends with the person he mentions, and I am not attending the event he mentions (and I personally know a few other people who got the same friend request from With Held, who are in exactly the same position as me). So, if we look at it, he is sending unsolicited, unjustified, non-mutually beneficial, "friend requests" to Random people on facebook. In a way, that sounds like something else I am familiar with. SPAM. Gracefully, I ignored his friend request. Then, yesterday, he sent another one. Which pissed me off. I vented, I channeled, and I may have broken some of the rules I mentioned above, when I sent him this message (Amanda said I should have stopped after the second sentence or so, but I needed to get my point across):

Hi,

I am not going to the DCI, and, while Ramon Thomas may think it is a good idea to "network" with facebook, you are using tactics that are commonly used by spammers. I am not your friend, I have not ever met you, and I probably won't ever meet you. You are breaking social norms, and if everyone on the internet broke accepted social norms, then no one would want to use the internet. It is quite ironic that you are attending the digital citizens indaba, and yet you clearly have no idea what social norms exist in the digital medium.

I know multiple people you have tried to friend, and your behaviour verges on harassment. When I IGNORED your friend request, please RESPECT ME, and back THE FUCK OFF.

So, I feel like the last sentence probably was a little harsh, but, hands up who is tired of spammers and people who think the internet has vastly different rules that govern it?

* Names changed to protect the identity of the person

Successful web applications

brad — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:36:08 +0200

I have a little theory I have been working on, it is probably dead obvious to some people, but it only crystalised in my head relatively recently. I have had a few ideas in my time (so far none have made it to the real world), and in mentally stepping through these ideas I have started to refine my methods of evaluating an idea. One of the mental tests I have been using recently is:

Does this idea:

Help some business/cross section of people do what they do, more efficiently/economically?
Would the technology associated to my idea help me act more efficiently in an environment of competition?
Or, does this idea earn me income by facilitating other people earning income

So, Point 1 and point 3 interact in an interesting way, since helping people operate more efficiently/economically in their business, I am effectively providing a service which facilitates other people earning income. There is a subtle difference, but I guess point 1 could be considered a further classification of point 3.

Basically, for me, the pencil test of an idea, deciding on its value and functionality, is "Does this make other people money", and that is the difference that social applications have brought to the table. Generally the oft touted value in a web app is "create eyeballs, and sell advertising", and it is valid, but it is not the only golden egg. Facebook has pretty much gotten the lion-share of eyeballs in recent time, and they have a powerful and subtle distinction over other eyeball generators: targeted advertising. If you look over the questions you answer on your profile it reads just like (but, is disguised well enough not to seem like) the kind of thing you see on marketing surveys. They offer a fantastic platform to advertisers: you can choose your segment _exactly_, pay per advert, etc. etc. Either way, facebook is successful on two fronts, it helps people be more efficient in their social networking (i.e. something they do normally), and provides a platform for companies to advertise efficiently (lets not get into effectiveness). So, they win on point 1, and they win on point 3. They also perform well on point 2, because they used technology well to achieve better efficiency in a competitive market.

But I didn't come here to praise just the facebook, I was only trying to illustrate my point. So, how well do the ideas floating round your head fit into my picture? If you hypothetically test your idea, does it honestly do well against those criteria? And, if it doesn't could you modify your idea to fit into that framework?

I think too many web applications are hyped up (the hype curve, duh), and brush over these things. There are lots of apps floating around which I know I will try out, say "neat" and never use again, because they don't help me be more efficient or help me make money (not to say that said app may not be good for other people).

The other further classification is "does this make it harder, or easier for someone to do said task" and that must take into account factors like bandwidth, computer availability etc. Good ideas meld into our lifestyles. A good example is 3D, interactive displays, they are a cute concept, and wow the audience on the bourne identity, but they are unrealistic until certain things happen that make them _easier_ to use than our current interactions with the tech around us. Its for that reason that people bleat about the iPhone not having a keyboard, because, well, the keyboard is a banging idea (still), and quite hard to beat.

A recent example of this was the new South African foray into cellphone based money transactions called "wiWallet". Their site claims it is "payment simplified". They are trying to crack the nut that people have been trying to crack for ages...turning your cellphone into a "wallet". But IMHO they have fared poorly. I personally have moved from using cash to using my credit card for everything, so I could get away with sticky taping my CC onto the back of my phone, and have a better opportunity of being able to pay almost anywhere. The idea of coding your CC onto your phone removes that physical token, but doesn't seem to add much value beyond the romantic idea of not having to carry a CC around. So your target market is now: People who have credit cards, and are willing to pay more money per month, for the chance that they will be able to pay for something without carrying their wallet (if their vendor has a machine which can do it). If they removed the need for having a credit card (like taking the money out of your airtime, etc.) then they would be moving into an interesting territory. Since I have to carry my driver's license (because I drive most of the places I am going to shop), carrying my credit card does not cost me anything extra. wiWallet does not make it more efficient for me to make a payment, it does facilitate making people money, but it doesn't improve on the model the credit card already provides. To me it feels like a hi-tech solution for a low-tech problem. Just my 2c.

Also, for real, genuine success, in the words of J.D. Hitchcock "Make your (website|application) awesome".

On Internet statistics

brad — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:05:35 +0200

Because I am on the internet, and because the apps I use offer statistics, I figure I would share some of them, feel free to do the same, if you feel the urge.

Google Reader

From your 157 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 1,698 items, starred 17 items, shared 48 items, and emailed 0 items.

Last.fm

16,205 plays since 8 Aug 2006

Twitter

Bug Report: Chocolate Flavour ProNutro

brad — Mon, 26 May 2008 14:13:21 +0200

Hi, I have a demonstrably repeatable problem which keeps cropping up at around 7:30am every morning (and at other sporadic times). So far, as best as I can understand, the problem is triggered by putting the ProNutro in my breakfast bowl (I have tried multiple bowls and still have the same show-stopper). Once I have added the ProNutro I add the milk, but I can only estimate how much I need, based on how much ProNutro I have put in. I assume everything is alright, because the bowl holds the milk and powder correctly, there is no visible overflow. I start eating the ProNutro and encounter problem after problem: The cereal remains too wet, or becomes too stodgy too quick. I am now faced with a tough choice, add more ProNutro, and risk making it too stodgy, or add more milk and risk it becoming too liquid. This is poor usability, and I would call it a show-stopper, or a near show-stopper. It seems to be a serious regression from Original flavour, and the developers seem to be unwilling, or unable to fix this.

Members of the community have been unhelpful, telling me "If you don't know how to do something so basic maybe you should rather be using coco pops, or some other dumbed down breakfast from Kellogs". Original flavour members said "Well, what do you expect, the packagers of Chocolate flavour know nothing...they are a bunch of ricers".

This kind of thing makes me want to leave the packaged breakfast cereal community entirely and go back to fruit, or even raw kernel's, and make Breakfast from Scratch (BFS). If the packagers/developers are unwilling to help out with this they are going to risk chasing a lot of users away, and ultimately cave the project, or worse, force members to fork the product and fix the problems by themselves, and confuse newbies even more.

P.S. I am a regular user of ProNutro, and I didn't ever have this problem with ProNutro Original flavour, and I am thinking of going back to Original flavour, and rolling in my own chocolate in, but until now I have not made PFS, and maybe I should just go right back to BFS.

P.P.S. I have found that I am also incredibly thirsty about an hour after eating, I suspect this troubles all versions, although it may only be limited to the newer versions which have slower milk up-take.

Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 co-habiting on Ubuntu 8.04

brad — Wed, 14 May 2008 10:29:11 +0200

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). I was pleasantly surprised when Firefox 3 greeted me as the default browser, but then hit a few speed bumps. Being a web developer I constantly use tools like firebug and MeasureIt. Unfortunately, until Firefox 3 is widespread (and released), many extensions don't work (there are hacks, but they come with problems). So I don't want to go back to Firefox 2 as my browser, because when I did try there were some issues with downgrading my profile, and I have become quite used to bookmark tags, awesomebar, the incredible difference in memory consumption, and the Save & Exit prompt. Running Firefox 2 concurrently is possible though, it comes at a price though.

Firstly, install firefox-2:

sudo apt-get install firefox-2

I went the route of using a separate user for FF2, but you could probably use profiles? So:

Create a candidate user:

sudo adduser firefox2

(where firefox2 is the username)

Then you can run firefox-2 as the user firefox2 using:

xhost +local:
sudo su firefox2
export DISPLAY=:0.0
firefox-2

The caution...using xhost +local: means any user logged onto your box (i.e. local), including ssh sessions, can access your X session. You will not have your bookmarks etc., but you can make a copy of bookmarks.html from your ~/.mozilla/firefox/%default profile%/bookmarks.html. You can now install the conventional FF add-ons etc.

This should be treated as a hack and an interim measure, because once FF3 is supported by all your favourite extensions, then there is no need to carry on using it. I use my FF3 as my primary browser, and FF2 as a development environ (so not having bookmarks is fine for me, because I literally only use it for opening the site I am currently working on).

Would appreciate constructive comments and crit. of better ways of doing this.

Dear Standard Bank, Internet banking division

brad — Wed, 07 May 2008 10:50:23 +0200

Hi,

The improvements to internet banking have some bugs, it seems.

I have had the experience twice now during "once off payments" that I get an error of "Internet banking is currently unavailable" when I go through with a transaction. It seems to be related to sending payment confirmations. It is bad behaviour because the transaction goes through, but the user (me) does not get a valid indication the payment has succeeded until a notification (sms, or email) comes through, or manually checks if there is a mention on the account transacted from/to.

I would also like to say that some of the "improvements" are actually a degradation, in terms of usability. The screen is more cluttered with graphics and text, and on my screen (which is running at 1280x800) has information pushed "below the fold". I would suggest that whoever is in charge of usability and new features looks into buying a copy of "Defensive Web Design" (http://www.amazon.com/Defensive-Design-Web-improve-messages/dp/073571410...), and other texts discussing usability on the web. While not absolutely correct, the EyeTRAC studies are a good reference point.

I (as a web developer) find it depressing that a service I am paying for has degraded usability, when the changes were supposedly improvements. It is not a wholely poor experience (there are some improvements, but my general experience is that the interface has become more confusing, not less confusing)

I am posting this email on my blog, and you are welcome to respond publicly (in the form of a comment), or as an email response.

--
Brad Whittington