random

My 9 year old nephew was making a Powerpoint slideshow today. I watched him regularly saving his slideshow using the menu and asked why he was not using the Save button, to which he replied, “Which one is it?”.

I looked at the toolbar and saw a button with a picture of a floppy disk. I don’t think he has ever seen a floppy disk in his life. I’m not surprised he didn’t associate this button with saving his slideshow.

I’ve seen articles suggesting that buttons with icons are not good for new users. This is especially true if the icons reference old technology they have never encountered.

Cheers

Tim…

You open a ticket and wait… When you do get a reply it tells you to send information you’ve already posted, or suggests you try some workarounds you’ve already listed in the ticket as having not worked for you. You get frustrated and write a blog post ranting about how terrible the support service is etc. I guess this could be a story about just about any internet support service I’ve had to use over the years.

Do you remember in the old days, before the internet was popular, when you phoned support lines? Do you remember how quickly some of these annoying issues were resolved by simply saying, “I’ve already sent that!”, to a real person at the end of the line? OK. I’ve conveniently forgotten to mention being put on hold for hours, but this is my blog and I’m allowed to have a totally biased opinion about things…

Maybe elements of the good old days are coming back thanks to social media. Check out this article where Michael Dell proposes using Google+ Hangouts as a way of connecting to Dell service and sales.

Imagine the joy of being able to rant directly at a real person again.

Cheers

Tim…

As is often the way, new major releases from WordPress are quickly followed by maintenance releases. The recent release of WordPress 3.2 is now quickly followed by WordPress 3.2.1. Happy upgrading.

Cheers

Tim…

I’m not a major user of mySQL, but I’ve been a dabbler for quite a few years as I use it for my website.

For my day-to-day poking around I tend to use phpMyAdmin. I don’t always keep on top of phpMyAdmin upgrades, but today I upgraded to version 3.4.3.1, which comes with a new default theme. I know it’s rather shallow, but what a difference a pretty interface makes.

Cheers

Tim…

phpBB 3.0.9 has been released. You can read the announcement here.

Cheers

Tim…

WordPress 3.2 has been released.

This is a big change and it is worth doing some testing before launching straight in. The minimum supported versions of mySQL and PHP have changed, so check your service can handle it using this plugin (Health Check).

You can read more about the changes in 3.2 here.

While writing this post in 3.2 I can see straight away that everything is much more responsive. No more waiting for the link dialog to appear etc.

Cheers

Tim…

It’s my 42nd birthday today. I’m a little annoyed because I’ve got a cold so I really can’t be bothered to do anything except lie on the bed and ignore the TV.

Cheers

Tim…

WordPress 3.1.4 maintenance release is here. Happy upgrading.

Cheers

Tim…

My car insurance renewal quote came through the post the other day. First thing I did was get insurance quotes from some comparison websites to see if my renewal price was reasonable. As it turned out it was in the same ballpark as the better quotes, so I figured I would accept the renewal. Before I did, I decided to get an online quote from the same company for a new policy. Low an behold, it was a little over £100 cheaper to take out a new policy rather than to renew the existing one.

I phoned customer services and asked what the discrepancy was and I was told it was an offer for new policies only. I promptly cancelled my renewal and took out a new policy with the same company and saved myself over £100.

I understand that companies do this because most customers are apathetic and will accept being ripped off for an easy life, but it stinks. Wouldn’t it be nice if companies valued your custom and gave existing customers their best deals, rather than saving them to entice new people, only to rip them off the new year. Don’t even get me started on the high-street banks…

Cheers

Tim…

I had to laugh when I read this story about Amazon Web Services. It’s posted with an attention grabbing title that implies this is an Amazon problem, but it is squarely down to user error/oversight.

Luckily I’ve not fallen into this trap yet, but I have done equally silly things in the past. That reminds me, I must go to a Pete Finnigan session next time we are at the same conference…

Cheers

Tim…