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Capitalism, “Let’s just be friends.”

Filed Under: Business, Politics, Technology, Web Design by admin — Leave a comment
August 30, 2010

I have a 3D TV valued at $3100 (Costco gave it to me for $150). I have 2 pairs of $200 glasses (thankfully came with the TV) that somehow require power to watch the 3D TV that plays the same movie I watched in the theater with non power-requiring-glasses. I have a PlayStation3 valued at $400 or so that supposedly has the capability to play a 3D movie, if one existed that I wanted to watch. I have a subscription to DirecTV that also costs around $100 a month if I want HD (and now 3D) content. Can I watch 3D movies with my current setup? No.

Why?

It’s interesting you should ask… they’ve decided regular HDMI can’t support the 3D signal and so, I now also have to upgrade my $3,000 receiver I got for Christmas a few years ago to be able to process 3D HDMI. Oh it supports normal HDMI, just not 3D HDMI…

I wasn’t silent when they came to tell me I could not sync my iPhone with more than one computer without deleting my music. I wasn’t silent when I plugged said iPhone into an iPhone enabled radio that now doesn’t “support that accessory”. I wasn’t silent when I lost my save progress and my Platinum trophy in Assassin’s Creed II because their servers went down and they’re required to have an internet connection to in order to play.

I’m sick of these cruddy business practices. Isn’t it capitalism’s solution that there should be a great product by an honest and true company that I can support with my hard earned money? Well, the last place I seem to be able to find those companies (like BeyondCompare3, Dwarf Fortress, 37Signals, etc.) is on the internet and even that they want to crud up with a tiered speed structure (thanks Google and Verizon for not being evil).

Am I the only one fed up? Where’s the honest business man supposed to fit into this?  Maybe I’m not loud enough, I’m just not sure how to get any louder.

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San Luis Obispo Tech Companies & Web Designers

Filed Under: Technology, Web Design by admin — Leave a comment
July 7, 2010

I’m often trying to help friends in San Luis Obispo find good tech jobs.  Here’s a list of companies I’ve compiled and links to their job pages:

Good luck and happy job hunting!

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jQuery Default Value swap code

Filed Under: Web Design by admin — Leave a comment
July 7, 2010

This quick little script will swap out your default value in either a search field or wherever and replace it with nothing when clicked on. Short, simple and to the point. If you need something a bit more robust take a look at Default Value plugin.

$(document).ready(function() {
$("#tagname").focus(function() {
if (this.value == this.defaultValue) {
this.value = "";
}
});
$("#tagname").blur(function() {
if (this.value == "") {
this.value = this.defaultValue;
}
});
});

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Hotmail ignores grandmother and claims no phone support because of non-existent Federal Law

Filed Under: Business by admin — Leave a comment
June 26, 2010

My girlfriend’s grandmother had her email hacked at Hotmail. Locked out and scared she contacted my girlfriend who has tried to go above and beyond to recover and restore her grandmother’s email account. Here is the exchange between my girlfriend and a Microsoft Hotmail agent Alvie:

You are being transferred to another Agent. Please stand by…

Alvie has joined this session!

Connected with Alvie. Your reference number for this chat session is 2380944.

Alvie: Welcome to Microsoft Customer Service chat. How may I help you?

Alvie: This chat service is designed to assist you with site navigation, technical support case submission, and customer service questions. If you need technical support, I can provide you with your support options or help you submit your case to the appropriate support professional who can work with you to resolve your issue.

Kelsey: Hi! I have a question regarding my grandmother’s hotmail account…

Kelsey: She doesn’t understand quite what’s going on, so I am attempting to help fix it for her.

Kelsey: Someone hacked into her email account, and is now spamming people from her contact list.

Kelsey: She cannot regain access to her account.

Kelsey: I have tried several times to change the password for her, but I get an error message every time.

Kelsey: I have even waited the 24 hours before trying again.

Kelsey: All of my information I am using is directly from her, and is accurate.

Kelsey: How can I recover her email account for her?

Alvie: Thank you Kelsey for all this information provided.

Alvie: For Hotmail issues, you may go to our support website that may help this issue resolve on your own. The website that you can go to is support.live.com.

Kelsey: I have tried that site. It has not helped. I need a Customer Service Representative to help resolve this please

Kelsey: That site offers three ways to help recover a compromised account. I have tried all three. None of them have worked.

Alvie: Unfortunately, we do not have phone support for hotmail accounts because it involves very confidential information and Microsoft is prohibited by Federal Law for this type of issues.

Kelsey: So I discovered. They make it impossible to find a person to help!

Kelsey: So if I cannot talk to a real live person, how am I supposed to resolve this??

Alvie: On that site, you can submit an incident online and someone from hotmail team will respond to you within 24 hours.

Kelsey: I tried that. It would not let me complete the report.

Alvie: For those spam mails sent to the contacts of your grandmother. Please tell the recipients of the mail to create a reply email and please cc this email address: abuse@microsoft.com.

Alvie: I am really sorry Kelsey, we don’t have phone support for Hotmail issues.

Kelsey: Why would that help? If I reply, won’t the spammer know that they have found a live email address?

Alvie: The email address of that spammer will be already blocked from sending emails to those contact lists.

Kelsey: By whom?

Kelsey: And what if I can get my grandmother’s email account back? Will that mean that she will also be blocked from emailing people on her contact list?

Alvie: By hotmail support. It is automatically generated in the system that the email address of that spammer will already be blocked.

Alvie: No. Only the email address or the source of that spam email will be blocked.

Alvie: You can post your question on that site. There is also a forum site at support.live.com

Kelsey: You know, salvaging her email address really isn’t all that important. If I can salvage her contact list though, I could import it into another email provider, like gmail. Do you know if there is a way to do that? To just save her contact list and export it?

Alvie: I am sorry Kelsey, I am not technically trained. I am afraid I could not be able to provide an answer to that question.

Kelsey: Ok. You have clearly tried to help, thank you.

Alvie: You are most welcome. Is there anything else?

Kelsey: Do you know what Federal law it is that prohibits Hotmail from providing phone support?

Alvie: It is a US Federal Law.

Kelsey: Can you please specify which law that is?

Alvie: I am sorry I do not have that specific information.

Kelsey: Who provided you with the information that there was a law at all?

Alvie: There is a law on invasion of privacy, Kelsey and that is in Federal law. Microsoft is not allowed to invade that privacy of our customers.

Kelsey: By providing phone support?

Alvie: Yes Kelsey.

Kelsey: Can you please give me the citation for this US Federal Code?

Alvie: I am sorry I do not have that information here right now.

Alvie: I am sorry we don’t have phone support for hotmail issues.

Kelsey: It seems like there may not actually be a law, right Alvie?

Kelsey: Can you please provide me with a Microsoft Customer Service phone number.

Kelsey: That is the last thing I need today.

Alvie: I cannot agree on you for that matter. I am just following policy here at Microsoft.

Alvie: Sure, the phone number you can call is 1-800-936-5700 option 0. Business hours is from 6 am – 3 pm, PST, Saturday and Sunday.

Kelsey: Ok. That is all.

Alvie: Ok. Thank you for using Microsoft Customer Service chat. Have a great day.

Alvie has left this session!

The session has ended!

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Save a complete webpage including CSS embedded images with Firefox

Filed Under: Web Design by admin — Leave a comment
March 31, 2010

I recently needed to allow a contractor to work on a single webpage of a website but couldn’t give them access to our server so I needed to wrap up the page into one neat little package and give them access to it. Problem was that Firefox didn’t save out all the images referenced inside the CSS as well as package it up for me.

Someone over at Mozilla had noticed this problem about how to save a complete webpage in Firefox and posted it. If you’re like me, and this didn’t work for initially, you’ll need to go also download the Nightly Tools Build and then download/install the Save Complete. The Nightly Tools Build will allow you to authorize the Save Complete and go along your merry way.

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gVim – Search and replace across multiple files

Filed Under: Web Design by admin — Leave a comment
March 26, 2010

Managing a flat file html website cut for a client resulted in not being able to manage the main navigation and side navigation with includes and I quickly needed a way to update all the navigation and links across all the files. Vim to the rescue.

First, select all your files you wish to edit and send them to vim and the buffer:

Then type what files within those you want to parse by. In this case I want all of them so I just specify:
:args *.html

This will search all files ending in “.html”.

Then I want to substitute a specific word with another:
:argdo %s/>Enterprise solutionsEnterprise services

The /'s act as separators for each phrase we're searching for. In this case ">Enterprise services< " and we'll be replacing it with ">Enterprise services<". After that, the "g" stands for global: meaning the whole file, and "e" meaning don't complain about not finding the term or throw errors up during the process. The pipe "|" means do something after this and "update" means save the file.

If you're using svn, you'll see a nice visual of all the files changed at the end as in my screenshot above.

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Zappos is looking for talent – in the custom header variables of their website assets

Filed Under: Business, Web Design by admin — 1 Comment
March 22, 2010

Zappos.com has some pretty cool shoes, and let’s be honest, one of the most positive company brand’s to work for since Google. I’ve always been impressed with their business practices: They pay employees to quit. So how do you hire someone who’s a complete web nerd? Put your job application in custom header variables of your website assets:

X-Core-Value: 10. Be Humble
X-Recruiting: If you're reading this, maybe you should be working at Zappos instead. Check out jobs.zappos.com

Who else but Zappos would recruit inside custom header tags?

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What I’m reading: March 2010

Filed Under: Links by admin — Leave a comment
March 19, 2010

What caught my attention on the web in March 2010:

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CSS Conditional Code

Filed Under: Web Design by admin — Leave a comment
March 15, 2010

I’m constantly finding myself needing to reference this for colleagues or for myself so it’s only appropriate to add it to the blog.  If you’re working with Internet Explorer on a regular basis and let’s be honest, if you’re in web design, you will be.

Here are the supported conditional mark ups for each version of IE:

height: 200px; /* normal browsers */
_height: 300px; /* IE6 */
.height: 250px; /* IE7 */
*height: 350px; /* All IEs */

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Public Relations Fail: Search Engine Optimization and Flash

Filed Under: SEO by admin — 1 Comment
January 18, 2010

I was very interested in reading Justin’s responses to Armando’s questions but was ultimately let down in that Justin answers questions like a politician: without an ounce of substance.

The problem with Flash is that in its current state it requires a site to double the code/content (HTML + XML) in order to serve appropriate content to all viewers. Armando asked how Flash works with Screen Readers and Search engines and the answer was the same: [We have API calls available for those technologies, it’s up to them to use them]. This tells me the Flash team doesn’t understand the problem nor are they willing to be a part of the solution, only shift the blame if said site doesn’t perform the way it’s supposed to.

What is Flash supposed to do?  Flash needs to be able to sit on top of a functional (consumable by all media, data driven, visual or auditorial) metadata content layer: HTML.  Why you ask?  It’s the only method of data delivery that is consumable by all things “web.”  Having the content in a central location gives two massive benefits that I have yet to see the Flash community answer with any semblance of assurance: How do you (the consumer) determine which content is more important Flash+XML or HTML?  Search engines (the single largest internet consumers) and if you have a screen reader would read BOTH and divide the value of the data between both sources.  Search rankings suffer as the value associated with a site is divided equally between the two sources of information and screen readers end up having to dive into and duplicate content to the listener.  Neither is an answer to the problem and in my opinion creates more problems than we had before.  We’ve already see Flash/HTML site solutions drop in SERPs due to the Link Juice be divided between the two links (one flash, the other html).  Rand Fishkin pointed this out in both the new book and his article referenced by Armando.

Flash should act as a substitute for CSS/Javascript and happily sit above the HTML. What Armando should have asked Justin is “Why is this so hard to achieve and what is Flash (Adobe) doing to help internet consumers simplify their data consumption?” And the answer is Flash is trying to create its own “browser”: Air. Why? Another good question for Armando but I believe they see the writing on the wall: Flash is a dying solution to rich multimedia on the web. They’re focusing their efforts on creating a new delivery method. Maybe the right move? Maybe not, only time will tell. Personally I’d like to see them embrace their role as a substitute for CSS/Javascript and push rich web multimedia by providing lightweight fast answers for questions CSS/Javascript can’t answer across all browsers. But what do I know…

I currently have one Air app (Tweetdeck) installed on my computer and it takes up almost as much memory as my browser does with 20 tabs open. Yes, that’s around 250mb of RAM to get… 140 characters of text. Delivery method outlook? Not great.

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