Category Archives: Huh?

August 12, 2008 · 8:17 am

Who touched my stuff?

You just made the list, buddy. Also, I don’t like no one touching my stuff. So just keep your meat-hooks off. If I catch any of you guys in my stuff, I’ll kill you

OK, so someone touched my stuff.  Well, not my real stuff – my digital stuff.  Specifically, somewhere between my web host, Spry, and the Gmail client I use to access the mail on the Spry server, something changed.  Yes, I’m aware that there have been big problems with Gmail recently, although I must admit that I have not had any trouble with one account while another one is inaccessible.

Nope, all was working quite well until late last week.  For months, Gmail would ping Spry every so often, emails sent to my business mail would pop up and I’d be…umm…in business! Then, nada.  I became Mr. Unpopular.  In fact, in looking at it, it was around 7:30 Thursday evening when the mail stopped flowing.  When I had received nothing via Gmail on Friday, I used the Spry client (not as nice as Gmail) to check mail.  Hey!  Turned out I was the belle of the ball and now officially negligent in responding to the folks who had written.

So fess up.  Someone changed something and now it’s broken.  As businesspeople, it’s important to constantly improve the product, but when something goes wrong, we need to let the people who rely on us know that we screwed up.  Did the folks at Spry do something to change how POP access happens?  Don’t know.  Twitter had way more to say about Google’s problem than did Google (such irony) and that’s wrong.

The problem happened late afternoon Eastern Time and so caused an explosion in the US blogosphere. Google said it didn’t usually respond publicly to such problems, but decided to because: “We heard loud and clear today how much people care about their Gmail accounts.”

Doesn’t respond publicly?  The openness of the web should inspire the same open, candid atittude among those who derive their living from it.

1 Comment

Filed under Helpful Hints, Huh?, Reality checks, What's Going On

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

August 8, 2008 · 8:31 am

Glass Houses

I’m sure not many of you are following the latest development in Torrent Spy saga out in LA.  Having already won a major judgment against Torrent Spy, the MPAA got sued for illegally obtaining emails from Torrent Spy from a former employee who hacked into the system.  The suit was thrown out using highly technical definitions (you can read about it here – it just makes your head hurt).  The decision is being appealed.

My point isn’t that the decision isn’t good, bad or indifferent.  What I can’t understand is the thinking of the individuals running the MPAA.  How is is OK to hire someone to steal information?  If a former bank employee went back into the bank’s computer and pulled up your financial records to give to an enemy, how is that fine because they technically had access and the records were where they were supposed to be?

The organization also said it originally believed the e-mails had been obtained legally. “It was only through discovery in this case that we learned that he had engaged in conduct that violated the law. We do not condone it, we repudiate it,” the group said in a statement.

You want to repudiate it?  Drop the damages you won in the suit.  Someone acting on your behalf broke the rules.  You need to call a penalty on yourself.

As businesspeople, we sometimes do things that we know, as human beings, are wrong.  We use “it’s business” to justify what is an utterly contemptible act committed to help our revenues, help our careers, etc.  How about we all try to do better?

Leave a comment

Filed under Helpful Hints, Huh?, Reality checks, What's Going On

Tagged as , , ,

July 30, 2008 · 1:33 pm

What’s the plural of doofus?

People who know me know that I’m not in love with accounting.  I understand it, I have a brother who is a CPA, I’ve been lucky to work with some fine accountants over the years.  That said, just as reading a cookbook doesn’t make one a chef, so too does buying an accounting program not make me a bookkeeper.

I’ve railed in this space before about Peachtree Accounting.  I also realize that 90%+ of problems are user error, not software design or code BTW.

So here’s one that isn’t.  I received an email this morning with an offer of “free shipping” on an upgrade of my accounting software package that is good for 2 days only.  Having realized that there are some nice features in the next level package, I decided to investigate by clicking through the link.  Maybe, if it’s not too expensive, I’d even buy it.

And that’s when the fun stopped dead.  Ignoring the fact that an offer of free shipping on a product that is to be downloaded is kind of bogus to begin with, the link I clicked through gave me this on the Peachtree web site:

We cannot determine the product you want to review. Please use your browser’s Back button, select another product and try again.

WHAT?  A potential customer just tried to order something (the link says “upgrade now”) and you blew them up?  What doofus coded this email?  What other doofus proofed it?  Yes, I tried in IE as well as Firefox and no joy.  Even the error message is screwed up – I didn’t get to that page via my browser per se – I clicked through an email and going backwards isn’t an option – the mail opened up a new tab and this error page is the only thing in it – one can’t go “back.”

This is, to me, as bad an error as a business can make:  literally to cut off a customer as they’re trying to hand you money.  If I’m running Sage Software, Peachtree’s parent, I’m finding a new person in charge of this.

So sorry, Peachtree.  I tried to upgrade, honest.  And hopefully I’ll be more careful entering data into your software than you seem to be with the emails that promote it.

Leave a comment

Filed under Helpful Hints, Huh?

Tagged as , , ,