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posted at 08:00:00 By Flipping Heck!

Posted In Rants

<start rant>
I've started to become a little annoyed with the sort of information tracking that Google and Facebook seem to be doing at the moment.

Okay, I know by using their products and services I've agreed to whatever terms and conditions the decided to have at the time but it's beginning to irritate me that they want to know everything about me - and appear to know everything about me.

Take this recent Facebook ad that keeps getting chucked in my face.

posted at 09:00:00 By Flipping Heck!

Posted In Rants

<start rant>

Updated: See the end of the post for the apparent solution

I've written before that I'm having issues with using Gmail over IMAP with Entourage and judging from the comments I'm not the only one (can't link to the commentor as they didn't leave a URL!) and now I'm having issues with the regular GMail web interface as well.

Originally I thought it was because of a dodgy extension I was running that was causing GMail to hang every time I clicked on a label but as it's happened on 4 different machines now I don't think an extension is the issue. I'm getting really fed up of having to force quit and restart Firefox every time I initially log in and click on something.

Seeing as I don't use the keyboard shortcuts, when I noticed they'd added a "basic html" version I though "Great, I'll use that one" but, guess what happens. Yes, GMail crashes FireFox when I click the link. Not only that, when I do get the basic html version up, Google never remembers that's my preference so I have to go through the same rigmarole every time I fire up the website.

I've written before about how I like to

posted at 21:05:07 By Flipping Heck!

Posted In Rants

<Start Rant>

So, there are a couple of things that I wish to buy so I have a look on Amazon, they're available but not directly from Amazon but rather their market place.

"Okay" I thought, I'l see what is available on EBay. Now, I have actually never bought anything from EBay, I've bid on a couple of things but never won.

So I go to sign in.

And that's as far as I get.

Admittedly I intially forgot my password but as I haven't used the account in about 2 years, what do you expect?

Entering my email address tells me that the email has been sent with my password.

I don't receive it.

Entering another email address tells me the email is sent

It isn't.

Entering any email address, even seeminggly random ones tells me my details have been sent. Surely it's not rocket science to tell me that the email address doesn't match the one on file for my username??

I finally remember my password (Note, I still haven't received an email from EBay) and get through to a screen telling me it's not strong enough and I need to change it. I really can't be bothered at this point so I click "change it later", I then have to type in 6 digits from a rather obscurred image.

I get told I've entered the numbers wrong. I try again. They're still wrong.

Finally I get the numbers correct and get booted back to the login screen.

I re-login and select....

posted at 20:14:19 By Flipping Heck!

Posted In Rants

When I finally got IMAP enabled on my GMail account, I thought "Woo-Hoo! Finally, I now have an easy way to manage my email across multiple computers".

Previously, when I only used my PC, I used Thunderbird as my mail client. It worked well, I liked the availability of extensions and it integrated with my GTD system nicely. As I also used Thunderbird at work I was comfortable with the program.

Then we moved over to Entourage at work - which in a business situation made more sense - and I got myself a MacBook so the tie to Thunderbird was reduced and I needed a way to manage email across multiple computers.

Originally I started using the standard GMail web interface for managing my mail but I found the interface limiting (I'm a drag and drop kinda girl) so I when I noticed IMAP was active on my account (it hadn't been since the initial rollout and yet my Dad's brand new GMail account had it enabled by default) I decided to get Entourage for my Mac (so I could play with the project centre and see if I could use it as a GTD tool) and set up GMail to use IMAP.

This is where the ....

posted at 17:53:31 By Flipping Heck!

Posted In Rants

I've been thinking recently that once I've finally got the printed version of my Web Project Management eBook sorted (which will be very soon) I'd run some sort of competition here and give away a few copies.

I keep an eye on the different types of competitions run (and boy are there loads!) through the Contest Blogger website.

A few weeks ago (I can't remember when exactly as the blog doesn't do dates) Contest Blogger posted about Ashwin Kanna (I'm not even going to bother linking to the gits website) running a competition to win $2500 for simply posting a couple of links and a few lines of text on your blog. Copy Blogger was sceptical that this contest was a pile of poo, and rightly so.

The competition's just ended and who's won? An anonymous blogger with a blogger blog set up 3 days before the contest ends and 2 posts (read more about it here at the Copy Blogger round-up page).

Hmm, my spider senses are tingling....

I haven't had a good

posted at 14:17:19 By Flipping Heck!

Posted In Rants

A British man has set a world record for making the First mobile 'phone call from the summit of Everest.

Huh??

I can't even get a signal in my local pub and this guy can make a call from 8,000 feet or whatever it is???

This is ridiculous, only last week we had a story of how a village could only use their mobile 'phones from a park bench (and only on the Orange network at that) - apparently they've worn it out by standing on it.

With mobile phone company's trying to push us into mobile TV and using the Internet on your mobile, they have to do better than this surely? They amount they charge for the service you get is ridiculous.

That reminds me, I wonder how much our record breaker's call cost - I suspect....

posted at 17:38:00 By Flipping Heck!

Posted In Rants

...Make fixing your crappy product almost impossible

I've a (legal) copy of a rather well known virus protection program on my PC, I shan't reveal the name of the company (*cough* begins with "M" *cough*) as I'm nice.

Just recently it stopped auto-updating for no reason what-so-ever. I think it had gone on strike due to overuse scanning all my dodgy downloads (but that's another story). I put off doing anything about it but as I'm quite quiet at work at the moment I thought I'd fix it. Simple, right? Just "Control Panel > Add Or Remove Programs > [Program Name] Change > Repair > Re-Install...." Do you think that worked? No it Flipping didn't.

At least I had an (unhelpful) error message to Google which pointed me to the manufacturers knowledgebase. Great, help at last! Well, not really as there were 5 different articles to choose from, all on the same subject but all with different solutions. Nice.

So, I tried the first 4 solutions and had no joy - crashing my machine several times in the process. The fifth solution? Install a new file over one that must have become corrupt. Okay, sounds good. Where is this file? That's where it gets annoying. The manufacturer's advice:

Another

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