Lets hope the unlucky thief accidentally fell down several flights of stairs repeatedly

Time for another “Donkey Award”…

This made me laugh:
San Francisco’s unluckiest thief

It seems that some idiot riding a bicycle, decided to grab an iPhone that was being held by a woman on San Francisco street. This he did and sped off down the road…

Unfortunately the thief didn’t know that the iPhone was being used as a test for some real-time tracking software – what are the chances eh?

The woman, rushed in to the office (the incident happened just outside), reported the theft, and the IT guys calmly directed the police directly exactly to where the thief was located.

Ha!

“You’re nicked sonny Jim…”
“Clap him in irons – you’re goin’ dahn son”

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There's a certain look that tells you all you need to know...

In my job, there’s a certain look people get from time to time – it’s a kind of stare, looking into the middle distance.
(This obviously has NO reflection on my ability to enchant a conversation with my lively personality )

In general it signifies that I’ve pushed the client off the end of the ‘Technical description’ plank and whomever is on the receiving end is floundering in uncharted waters.
At this point it’s customary to ask “Does that make sense” – oddly most people say “YES!”

This happened today…

A client wants a new website, something which I’m increasingly aware is not as simple as it may sound.
What KIND of website the client (and not specifically this client), isn’t quite sure of.
Is is a simple ‘Brochure style’ website?
Maybe a portfolio style showing the clients service offerings?
Would you like it to be content managed?
There are LOTS of qualifying questions to be asked, this is where the fun lies…

Once you’ve educated the client, and produced some spectacular creative images for the client to look at, it’s seriously disheartening to hear that the client thinks that’s “MOST” of the work done.
After all, there is the imagery staring them in the face right?
Oh dear…
Analogy time:
I show you a picture of your nice new, custom built, car – it’s still a picture right, not the actual car! ~ It’s going to take some time to build this…

Now the client has an understanding of the concepts AND the process involved ~ still no easy ride!
“Will it be finished by next week? Only we’ve got a [insert reason for ridiculous timescale here] coming up…”

I’m off to see the website pixies, maybe they can create a custom built, CMS based, website with full client tracking and contact facilites in a week!
Now where did I leave my fairy wand..?

If this makes little sense ~ and I suspect it doesn’t ~ I’m back from my Irish Odyssey complete with heavy cold.
This medication is great though

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So Apple 'Change Everything' - with a phone that fails to make calls. What a fabulous idea! Save money on calls with the iPhone.

Most of the tech websites are speculating on what Apple will do about it’s latest iPhone offering.

Personally i think anything less than a total recall of the phones, and a reissue with the problem fixed, will be an insult to the “People of the Apple Cult”.

It seems to me that little else is of interest to some techies than what Apple decide to do next. This IMHO is a little ridiculous.
Apple have a great perchant for creating stunning design, great advertising, and providing middle of the road products. All at a stupidly high cost. This is great branding though – create such a frenzied desire for your products and the great unwashed (literally in some of the Apple fanboy cases) will flock to buy, even if the product is rubbish/over priced.

HELLO PUBLIC – IT’S A PHONE!!
For goodness sakes – there are quite a few on the market you know..!

From time to time, doing what I do, I come across people who blindly believe that everything Apple do is touched by magic :dizzy:  . These people are the sadly deluded, and gifted more in the wallet than the skull methinks…
The truth is (IMHO) SOME apple products are great – though I’d struggle to name them – the PCs used by some of my design clients are fairly good, but i struggle to see what extra you are gaining over a suitably equipped PC (for about 2/3 of the price).

People tell me that “they just work” – not true when seen from this side of the fence.
I can tell you of quite a few clients who have had to buy 2 or 3 replacement Mac products whilst their 5-6 years old PCs soldier on, day after day.

This debacle over the iPhone 4 proves my point (for those residing in news-proof caves, the iPhone has a problem with it’s internal aerial meaning it has very poor reception in some cases, unless held in the correct position ). THE IPHONE 4 IS CURRENTLY RUBBISH!
Though this minor fact won’t have any effect on the sales, as some pundits are speculating. Most Apple fanboys are, at best, ill informed, and will simply buy the latest offering regardless. The fact that it doesn’t work won’t matter…

I’ll expect the heavy mob round soon…
Pointing out the Emperor’s new clothes is never popular…

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For once in my life I have to praise BT!

It’s difficult to say this; I’d even go so far as to say that it brings physical tears to my lovely blue peepers – BUT.

It seems that the corporate behemoth that is BT, has paired up with another telecommunication monster, to go head to head with the Con-Dem coalition over the ludicrous ’Digital Economy Act’. BT and TalkTalk challenge Digital Economy Act

They say (quite rightly IMHO ) that the bill was rushed through parliament in the pre-election ‘Wash-up period’, the time just before parliament was dissolved. It was not properly debated, and the implications for enacting this, not properly understood.

Some of you might say “So What!” – and I can see why this would be a valid attitude to have.
But this bill, which is now LAW by the way, places quite a few restrictions on the way that networks are policed and carry data.

Here’s a scenario for you:
Person A (PA) has a wireless network.

It’s quite poorly protected with inadequate security – being a ‘regular’ user of IT, he/she neither knows nor cares about this.
Dodgy Neighbour B (DNB) comes along and realises that the network is in secure and connects – something Person A has no knowledge of.
DNB proceeds to download all sorts of illegal movies, music, games etc. from PA’s network.

Here’s the rub, PA gets into all sorts of legal trouble for something he/she knew nothing about! Up to the point of being cut off from the Internet AND persued through the courts for copyright infringement – potentially costing many £££s in fines.
DNB sits back and enjoys his illegal stuff with a beer…

Expand that to the ‘public’ free wireless networks on trains, in cafés etc. and you can plainly see that these vital business access points will disappear over night with the fear of being abused.

Lets hope that BT and TalkTalk get somewhere and this nasty little law gets revoked as soon as possible; BEFORE the true damage is done and all these regular users of the net end up prosecuted for nothing!
Just another example of our “knee jerk” reactionary government, doing something akin to hitting a walnut with a JCB.

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More fixes for Micro$oft's flagship product

Once again I start having more ‘fun’ with Micro$ofts flagship product – it seems to be the usual M$ release program:

1) Release buggy, untested software to the masses
2) Convince technicians that paying M$ to be beta testers for their software is a good thing.
3) Expect technical folk worldwide to solve the most basic issues.
4) Reap the rewards and make big Bill even richer…

Sigh…

This time it’s a stupid little error with the Windows 7 Desktop not refreshing ; By that I mean that the icons don’t disappear when you delete something, or appear when you create something new.
On to the fix…

• Click Start → Run (or press the Windows flag key and the ‘R’ key together)
• Type the word ‘regedit’ – without the quotes
• Keep clicking the ‘+’s and navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{BDEADE7F-C265-11D0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F}\Instance (make sure you are in the exact value noted)
• Look for the ‘DontRefresh’ value and double click it
• Change the value from 1 to 0
• Reboot

Enjoy the rest of your life

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