I’ve got email hangover, that sinking feeling you get when you know there are emails that need attention, but they’re just not at the top of the priority pile. All contributing to attention deficit and lack of focus.
Today I’ve spent working on one or two important projects, and looking at my Inbox now, I just can’t stand the thought of working the weekend, and then getting to an overflowing mailbox on Monday. It’s like going on a date without brushing your teeth. Schoolboy error.
So, who’s with me? Who has a similar Inbox and wants to put a few hours into making it sane right now, today. We can shoot the shit, drink a few beers, then grab some pizza…. 
Comment if you’re keen, and I’ll send you my MSN messenger details.
Update: 150 emails to go… time for coffee
Update: 131 emails to go… and it’s 00:42, so time for bed. Mission not accomplished ;-(
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I’m working on a project involving Ubuntu linux and last night I showed a mate Ubuntu for the first time.
Questions ranged from “is this really free?” to “you sure you install software like that?” to “and it took you half an hour to install all of this?” to “what is open source?” to “and it runs on your old P2 450??” to “and they sent you the cd’s for free?” to “and I can save to Word .doc format, right?”…
He was gobsmacked!
I’m glad I could share it with him, as I think he walked away a convert
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I’m never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever going to use Clara for hosting for myself, or anyone else. Ever, I wouldn’t even wish it upon my worst enemy.
On a suckometer, Clara.net seriously suck IMHO. I’m not in the habit of throwing mud in general, and I don’t even like doing it when things get messy. My mom always taught me to be the gentleman, so that’s how I try keep karma, but I feel that this is so, so, so bad, that I have to warn you, just in case you ever need to look for hosting in the UK.
Think of it as a public service announcement.
In the last two weeks, I’ve been on the phone with two seperate issues for a total of about 3 hours, and troubleshooting on my own for about a day or so. As yet, our second and current support issue has not yet been resolved.
Here’s why I wouldn’t use them:
- Their tools to manage a domain, in my opinion, are badly designed (especially the User Interface) and have limited functionality for the price you pay, in comparison to other similiar service providers
- I’ve found that their 1st line support people don’t seem to know what they are doing in much detail, or at best that there are a few good support guys and more bad support guys. When you start asking technical questions you get put on hold a lot. Even worse, they assume that you know nothing, which is a bad assumption to make.
- I’ve had to fax them a signed letterheaded document to get MX records (that’s geek for a domains email records) changed. At the same time I emailed the docs to the support person. When I called to check why it wasn’t working, the support guy read the MX record as .daemonmall.net as opposed to daemonmail.net - this was ‘cos the fax wasn’t clear enough to spot the i! When was the last time you sent a fax? You’d think that the support guy would make the association since it was an MX record, or would at least email/call back to check
- When I’ve called support, I’ve been told that they are moving to a new server platform. When I asked which one, I wasn’t given a straight answer, so I’m starting to think that the story is smoke and mirrors.
- Like any decent password, the mySQL database password had a few upper/lower case combo’s to keep hackers at bay. When I tried to access the phpMyAdmin interface, I couldn’t get access. The support guy changed the password to “testing123″ and told me all was working fine. So I changed it back to the more secure password and it didn’t work again. Another support call later, I was told passwords for mySQL have to be lower case, but you don’t get told that on the database creation page. If you want to change the password of the database, you have to do it in a form titled “Rename MySQL database”… The support guy did, however, agree with me that it should be changed to make it more useable…
- I then had to send an email to escalate the support issue to their “more technical support guys”… I thought they were going to ask me to send another fax
- After a helluva lot of telephone music, I can say with authority that it is really bad. The “voice” should also tell you that you have moved up the queue, not that you’ve remained at position number 10…
Has anyone else had any other hosting horror stories that they can relate?
Update: Turns out they have a specific domain that you are supposed to use when using a MySQL database on their system, yet they neglect to tell you that when you actually create the database itself. Nice to think they’ve thought the process through, and that it took an escalation to a “system guy” before someone flagged that as the problem, even when I had asked the support guy to confirm that the Db Host is in fact “localhost”… You live and you learn I guess.
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_ Heather Hopkins - Hitwise UK
Heather Hopkins is Director of Research for Hitwise UK.
In this role, Heather analyses the trends affecting businesses online and works with Hitwise clients to identify opportunities and threats to online business growth. Heather writes regular Insight Reports on the gambling, travel, search and retail sector, covering affiliate marketing, search, and audience profiling. She is a regular speaker at industry conferences and is quoted regularly in trade publications, including NMA and Marketing as well as the dailies including the Financial Times, the Evening Standard, and the Telegraph.
Prior to joining Hitwise, Heather was a Vice President with Dalbar, a market research firm in Boston, Massachusetts and Toronto, Ontario.
I watched Heather speak yesterday, and really enjoyed the talk. Check out her blog if you’re into search stuff…
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_ Google Open Party
Our house is your house
Google’s new office in London is having an open house
party, and you’re invited. The evening will be an opportunity
for engineering professionals to check out our new digs, meet
the Google London team, and feast on some posh nosh.
Hat tip: Ian Kershaw from MTV Europe
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Yesterday I spent the day at the Netimperative DMZ: Digital Marketing Zone 2005, which was pretty interesting all round.
I started with the “Web Analytic’s - How can it help you to manage your customers and your website?” seminar, which I found pretty interesting, mainly ‘cos I’ve always had an interest in web analytics (probably a throwback from doing ecology models) . One of the underlying themes was the idea that web site data in itself is not the nirvana we shoud be looking for, but rather actionable steps that lead from the data to incremental business and user centric improvements. Basically, it’s easy to create data, but it’s what you do with that data that makes using web analytics useful to the business. I also felt that the web analytisc tools I saw (screenshots) looked very complicated and lacked intuitive user interfaces…
In the “Search Marketing” seminar I found the talks by Heather Hopkins (Director of Research, Hitwise) and Jonathan Davey (Managing Director, Business in Berkshire) the most interesting. Heather came accross very well, and shared some neat stuff that was new and interesting (search proxy and search latency) to me; whilst Jonathan was just inspirational and clearly passionate about what he was doing.
The “Perfect Pitch:Ad-serving & Trafficking” session was interesting from a pure ad numbers point of view, but just got messy when the guys presenting tried to go into too much product detail. I’m not sure that 15 minutes is enough time to go into application specifics…. It did however remind me that even though I seem to have switched off from adverts and rarely if ever click on a banner advertising anything, there are still massive numbers of adverts being served every day, so it must still be working…
All in all, a good day out, but I wonder whether any of the suppliers on show found the event brought them any qualified leads, as there seemed to be an overwhelming majority of industry people there (like me!).
Notes to self:
- RSS takeup on the FT.com website has been doubling every month so far.
- When giving a talk at an industry event, do less of a sales pitch and more of an information / knowledge share.
- Keep slide points to less than 5 on each and every slide, if you want people to take in what you’re talking about.
- Nedstat has a database of about 1.4 billion IP addresses!
- None of the presenters I heard spoke about blogs, wiki’s or podcasting (wrt online publishing), and one person mentioned RSS.
For more detail, Mike Butcher kept a running blog of the day….
I’ve just had lunch with a guy who recently set up a telephone directory enquiries business about 3 years ago, and is starting to feel like things in his business are on autopilot.
Nice place to be in I think
Anyways, we were chatting about what it takes to get something off the ground, and the general consensus is that it takes a lot more than you originally think it will, and it severely impacts every other area of your life. This isn’t new to me, and I’m sure neither to you.
What I’m interested in is your thoughts on the effort required to get something from an A4 piece of paper with scribbles on it, to a working Beta version that you can start charging people for… I know a few people that are in this phase now, and all of them have a different point of view, so it would be good to hear what you guys think, or what experiences you can relate to?
_ Amazon.co.uk: DVD: Old Boy
Synopsis
A man who is held captive for fifteen years and whose wife is murdered is released suddenly and given money. He is asked to discover why he was held prisoner. If he finds the answer his kidnapper will kill himself. Korean dialogue with English subtitles.
DVD Description
Having knocked out judges at this year’s Cannes, winning the Grand Prix Du Jury prize and championed by Tarantino, Park Chan-Wook’s startling OLD BOY comes out on DVD in a fantastic two-disc set. Unsettling but ingenious and darkly comic, it’s a revenge movie wrapped in a mystery that twists the nerves at every scene. Following a drunken spree, a businessman is arrested and imprisoned for 15 years, not knowing his crime or who his captors are. Suddenly, he’s released and given three days to discover why he was shut away and who was responsible. A critical and box-office hit, the double disc set includes newly created English subtitles and commentaries with a exclusive Park Chan-Wook interview and original UK trailer.
Simply brilliant.
Don’t watch it if you’re looking for a Hong Kong cinema Kung-Fu extravaganza…
I’d been watching this one on the shelves for a long time, and since my housemates aren’t exactly fans of this genre of movie I had to pick a chance when I knew I could watch it before it became overdue. Anyways, I found my opportunity recently and can only say that this movie is a piece of cinematic brilliance, that any self respecting film lover should see. There is violence (some of it is insinuated in the mind, made worse by the thought of it), and genuinely shocking scenes which I don’t recommend letting yuor youngsters see (but which do support the plot and characters fully).
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