Yahoo Response Time

Everything started with me trying to enter my home town, Osijek, on stackoverflow careers. I was quite annoyed with auto change of Osijek to Esseg - name that my town had before year 1918 (during Habsburg Monarchy).

I got information that this is taken from geo.places Yahoo table and that this is place to complain. On contact page it was clearly said that all technical questions or bugs should be addressed in support forums (“Please use our developer forums for both issues so that other developers can benefit from the conversations.”). I did just that - I created new post in Yahoo developer forum. I tried to be as specific as possible and I avoided to be too annoying with constant repost.

It has been a month now and error remains. I am little bit disappointed since I haven’t seen any action at all. I would understand if somebody challenged my claim. I would understand if somebody said that independent verification is needed. I cannot understand that there is no answer at all. If you say that forums are your only official support, you better post some replies there.

Since original approach didn’t work, I will probably start to annoy everybody and repost this from time to time. I am quite sure that Jeff Atwood (meta stackoverflow moderator) will bother them too. Hopefully some time next year I will be able to have my city named correctly.

Microsoft Connect

Microsoft started Connect site a while ago and I understood it as central hub for all bug reports. If came handy for taking bug reports for Windows 7 (now closed) and Visual Studio. Interface was simple and you could be sure that you would get some response. Even if that response is “Won’t Fix”.

This is probably why I am so furious on Microsoft Office team. Only thing they did is to include link to page full of marketing. Microsoft already has full infrastructure in place for reporting bugs but they decide not to use it.

Yes, I know that there is Send-a-Smile program available for Office 2010 and I am aware that it may be easier for most of people. However, this should not be an excuse. Windows 7 team managed to include their stand-alone utility with Connect without big issues.

Now you must excuse me since I need to reboot my computer in order to boot into another Windows instance with Office 2010 beta in order to report a bug. Only if there was a web interface for that… :)

We're Sorry, but the Clip You Selected Isn't Available From Your Location

As I live in Croatia, I am used to videos being blocked.

With all this Conan vs. Leno controversy, I decided to check what exactly is going on. One of videos I tried to watch was on The Jay Leno Show page. It featured standard “We’re sorry”, but only after giving me advertisement message before.

If they decide not to offer their program in my country, I can live with this. But how can one in straight face say that while actual program may not be available for me, advertisements are fine.

And it is not only videos. It apply when you are buying stuff too. It is books on Amazon, audio books on Audible, and quite a few other places.

I hate when I need to download content from unauthorized source (e.g. torrents) just because they do not want my money. If you do not consider my money “green” enough, it is fine, but then do not complain that piracy is wide-spread when you are one that is forcing it.

Boarding Time

I am always puzzled with airplane boarding times. On each step of a way you are warned that this is essential for timing. Then you come to the gate and wait. And wait.

Since this delay happens so often, one could expect airliners to move boarding time a little. But, of course, boarding time for aircraft with 50 seats and for one with 100 is completely the same.

In this era of computers, is it so hard to check old boarding data and optimize process a little?

P.S. Here I must note one single exception - Malév. That Hungarian airliner is always boarding on time. Why other cannot do the same?

Hohm Beta

While ago I applied for beta of Hohm. Site looked like nice utility. You would (I assume) put list of your home appliances and site would calculate how much electricity you are using.

However, it seems that people from Croatia are not worthy of those calculations since to sign up you need valid postal code. Although it is not written clearly anywhere it became clear to me that Croatian postal code is no-no.

Maybe there is valid reason why only U.S.A. is supported by this web site. Maybe it is political decision - I am fine with this also. What I am not fine with is Microsoft sending me “sign up today” message while it has Croatia in my profile. Is it so hard to filter your non-U.S.A. customers and not send them an invitation?

Characters Missing in Action

I live in small country named Croatia. Like most of countries on “old continent” we use some specific letters. For Croatia those specific letters include Č, Ć, Đ, Š and Ž. Usual way of entering those letters is to use Symbols screen and select from all special characters. It is not ideal, but it is manageable.

Only problem is letter Đ. For some reason, Microsoft decided to omit that one from symbol selection. Don’t get me wrong - that letter is supported - problem is how to enter it on mobile device.

To solve it, I just do entering of this letter on computer and let it synchronize to mobile. If I really need to enter it on machine, I just open some old contact with that letter and copy-paste it in correct place.

Only issue I had with that plan was that Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard (Smartphone) has no copy-paste support out-of-box. However, there is nice freeware program called VITO CopyPaste that works pretty good.

MAXtv

I think that my IT background caused me to get IPTV as soon as it was available to me. Service that I decided on was MAXtv.

It had few quirks now and then, but I was generally satisfied. Few days ago they even said that there will be update making that service even better (more human-friendly, some would say).

Installation that started at 08:00 is now more than one hour in progress. Customer service expects that everything should be back to normal by noon.

Don’t you do that kind of update during night time?

Color Combination Thou Shalt Not Use

Currently there is handball world championship in Croatia. I am not such a big handball fan so I don’t even plan to visit any game (played some 20 minutes of walking distance) but I do plan to watch it on TV few times.

I was at my parents place yesterday doing some unrelated work, but with TV near it was difficult not to scan a result from time to time. I cannot help it if I am curious person. But my curiosity had huge problem (or small one) - font and coloring of part that was displaying game result. Somebody - I can only assume professional designer - decided that red numbers on light red background should be used.

I do wear glasses when I work on computer but my vision is good enough to be able to do all other tasks without them (those who are familiar with my habit of loosing glasses everywhere know that I also do programming for few days without them). If I cannot be sure what numbers do I see on it on 72cm TV from other side of room, my father had no fighting (seeing) chance.

I give you enlarged part of that (captured and cropped from RTL’s own video at resolution of 1280x1024). On this picture you can see how really close colors are.

I am angry when vision of some designer (or even worse - designer comity) decides that need for fire theme is more important than actual readability of final solution. I can partly understand their (probable) excuse. They were all doing work on high-resolution, high-fidelity monitors and that problem was not visible there. What was missing was that final testing phase: looking at whole thing from user perspective. User perspective in Croatia is still CRT TV and HD is rarely to be found.

There is real lesson to be learned here even for application development. Always test your program in your user’s environment. “It works on my system” is a poor excuse for user.