Technological Nihilism

Funny chat with HP printer support specialist.

2009-01-28T10:42:00.003-06:00

Juan Carlos, the IT person in my office sent this chat to me.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Juan Carlos : Need to change the default settings for the printer so that I don't have to go into the printer properties every time I need to print from firefox... ie orientation, page size... I already have a preset saved
[An agent will be with you shortly.]
[You are now chatting with Aamir .]
Aamir : Welcome to HP Total Care Chat Support for Imaging & Printing Group. My name is Aamir . Please give me a few moments while I review your problem description details.
Juan Carlos : ok
Aamir : Juan please tell me that is the printer printing in other applications?
Aamir : Is it printing in MS Word or Internet Explorer ?
Juan Carlos : it's firefox
Juan Carlos : sorry
Juan Carlos : it does print on all applications
Juan Carlos : but when I need it to print in landscape always without me having to go into the printer properties everytime
Aamir : Are you facing similar difficulty is other applications ?
Juan Carlos : same ones
Aamir : ok
Aamir : Do you mean to say that when you try to print through MS Word, you have to go to printer properties to give print command.
Aamir : When was the last time it was working fine?
Did you change anything on the machine recently?

Aamir : Have you recently installed any software or made any hardware changes on your machine?
Juan Carlos : I need to print everything I have in landscape orientation instead of portrait
Juan Carlos : that's it
Juan Carlos : and everytime I need to print I have to go into the printer properties and change it to landscape manually, I want to change it to be the default setting and I'm unable to save it as such
Aamir : Juan which Operating system are you using ?
Aamir : Is it Windows Vista ?
Juan Carlos : yes
Aamir : Juan I apologize that this issue would be resolved by landscape technical support department and it does not come under HP
Aamir : It is advised to contact lanscape support and they are in the better position to assist you regarding this issue.
Juan Carlos : what do you mean?
Juan Carlos : there's a landscape tech support department, just to change the orientation of the page?
Juan Carlos : are you there?
Aamir : yes
Aamir : You may experience a lag in response while your interaction, due TO server maintenance. The inconvenience caused to you is deeply regretted
Juan Carlos : do you know what landscape and portrait orientation is in regards to printing?
Juan Carlos : portrait orientation would be 8.5in x 11in
Juan Carlos : landscape is 11in x 8.5in
Aamir : Juan I am going to connect you with lanscape , give me a minute
Aamir : I am working on it
Juan Carlos : wow
Aamir : Juan click Start
Aamir : Printers and Faxes
Aamir : Right click on Printer Icon
Aamir : Click on Properties
Juan Carlos : hold on
Aamir : Sorry not properties
Aamir : Printing Preferences
Aamir : Click on landscape and then click on Apply
Juan Carlos : did that
Aamir : now Landscape is default setting
Aamir : Please check and confirm
Juan Carlos : checking
Aamir : ok'
Juan Carlos : that did it
Juan Carlos : thank you Aamir
Aamir : is it ok now ?
Juan Carlos : yes
Aamir : Juan I apoligise for my confusion that I had in between .
Aamir : However if you ever need our services plese fell free to contact us through phone, chat or email
Aamir : Thank you for contacting HP Total care and giving us an opportunity to serve you. It has been a pleasure assisting you today.
Aamir : Juan are you still online with me ?
Aamir : Please let me know, if you are receiving my responses?
Aamir : Not to rush you, are you still online with me?
Aamir : I have not received a response from you in over a minute. Please reply within the next minute to allow me to continue our chat.
Aamir : Since I am not receiving any response from you within the last 1 minute, I will be ending this session. Thank you for visiting HP CHAT Technical Support.

Is a corporate Blog with no comments a blog or just "friendly" press releases?

2006-03-12T20:37:00.000-06:00

Yes, I am talking about Google's official "Google Blog". If you read it you will notice there are no comments, no "links to this post" (well just a few do from what I can see), no real conversation going on at all, they are just press releases written by Google employees. Seems to me that they pull a name from a hat (in the team with the fresh news) and that person has to write the post. Now I am not much of a language expert (as you can tell by my writing) and english is not my main language, but if I had to guess I would even say the posts are read and proofread by somebody. Well, maybe not, but the posts do seem like they all have a fakeness to them....they are just sooo friendly and chirpy its annoying. I want to talk to them, but I dont get an option there. I can only contact them through their standard online forms.
Its weird, but the do no evil company hides so much from the public that I can only assume they are doing evil in some way (and no, I am not talking about them hosting so much info online, I think thats fine...you have a choice not to give it to them afterall).
On the other hand, you have Microsoft which is the approved defacto evil company. Yet I see blogs from a lot of their programmers and employees, and I can either contact them through the blogs or sometimes even directly through email. In their blogs they admit mistakes, take criticism, fight back when they don't agree, etc. Much more decent on their part if you ask me.
So back to my original question...should all blogs have comments to be blogs?

Technorati Tags: blogs microsoft google scoble

Origami is the Flispstart PC

2006-03-02T18:32:00.000-06:00

Think about it. Flipstart was big news about 2 years ago, they claimed they would be out in
2004 yet 2004 came and went and so did 2005. Where did the flipstart go? If I had to
guess I'd say it is what origami was based on. Vulcan the maker of the flipstart is owned by a major MSFT shareholder
afterall. Besides, it just makes sense. The ultimate portable machine is not a phone with
pda capabilities, nor a pda with phone capabilities. Its not a phone with a camera nor an mp3
player with basic pda features. The ultimate portable machine does not require mobile pc,
palm, symbian or embedded linux. Why? because all of these machines and OSs have limitations.
The ultimate portable machine is a full blown windows/linux/osx machine with all its capabilities
intact but in a small form factor. Probably would have to give away speed and physical connectivity
options, and have them replaced by wireless features, but still have the posibility to have
everything in there. Doesn't it bother you that you can receive plain text email but not html mail?
Or you can get html email in some cases, but not the attachments? A full blown windows xp/vista tablet
machine on a small form factor would be the answer to all "problems".
Thats what the flipstart is and that is why I am guessing origami is the next incarnation of the
vaporware project that the flipstart has been up to now.

msn messenger finally adds a decent contact manager....but

2006-03-01T01:26:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned on a previous post I think the ideal PIM would come in the form of an IM. Part of this would include centralized contact information management.
In my ideal world my contact/presentation card would only have my name and my email address....the person would add me to his/her IM and automatically they would have all my contact information....address, phone, fax, etc....and if I change departments in the company, change cell phone number, etc....it would automatically be updated for everybody. This would be a great way to avoid bounces on my end of year holiday wishes...where I usually get 10-20 bounces from people that have changed main email.
Seems that the new MSN Messenger aka Live Messenger Beta has functionality like this....BUT...also seems that to actually get to the peoples information a browser window has to open....WHY? WHY? WHY? Why cant it be part of the actual IM? its faster, more efficient, and lets you use the information in other programs.....why did they finally do the right thing with the contact information yet they provide it through such a bad interface?

history through the eyes of nerds

2006-02-25T21:31:00.000-06:00

A while ago, between some boxes my mother had packed up during a move, I found pictures of my grandmother from when she was a teenager. These probably date to the 1930s or early 1940s in Poland. Quite interesting. The picture's colors had faded a bit, but the image was still very clear. A nice memory. In a different box I found dozens of photo albums from my mother and father's wedding, my childhood, my brother and sister etc....nice stuff. Too bad its very likely the end of photographic history of my family. In a few months my sister will be having a baby. And though I live far from where she is, I will most likely be able to see that baby growing up through countless images and videos emailed to me. It will be nice while as the baby is growing up, but will that baby ever get to show its children and grandchildren what it looked like grwing up? I doubt it. In the past all you needed to save your memories was a water tight box. Today you require knowledge way above most peoples technological abilities in order to safely save photos. Families without an assigned geek will loose absolutely every picture in their possesion every few years, and will have to start over.
Pictures will be lost everytime a hard drive crashes (and you know all drives eventually crash), everytime a virus invades a machine, and everytime a machine is "slow" and is taken to a lazy pseudo-geek who will "solve" all problems with a reformat, not caring about the information inside the machine.
Several years from now, the only personal/family history of the late 20th and early 21st centuries that will remain will be that of geeks and nerds.

blogging to make your software "better"

2006-02-22T17:31:00.000-06:00

As mentioned on my previous post I believe that as far as calendars go, Spongecell is currently better than 30 Boxes. The only feature I see on 30 boxes that spongecell currently doesn't seem to have (maybe I missed it) is the recurring dates feature.
So why is it that 30 boxes got all the hype and spongecell was only mentioned as a "me too" service? I might be wrong, but I think its because the developers of 30 Boxes have blogs. That makes their product to either seem to be better or for others bloggers to speak highly about it in order to get recognition when they too present products in the future.
So blogging is pretty much subconcious advertising.

mashups and widgets...we need a standard

2006-02-22T15:13:00.000-06:00

The last couple of weeks I saw 30 boxes and all the hype around it, and was surprised at why it got so much attention and spongecell didn't. Coincidentally I had seen spongecell about one or two days earlier. As far as I am concerned spongecell might actually be a little better (yet it got no a-list blogger a la robert scoble advertising....but thats another story which I might get into in another post).
The similarities between these two services got me thinking. Why doesn't anybody develop a mashup/wigdet standard, so that all these services can actually work together, or at least compete in a fair playing field. If the calendars all have a way to be integrated as "widgets" into a personal space, then it would be pretty easy for me to actually select the best one and not have to decide whether I want the best calendar or the site with the most feautures even thought some might be mediocre.
Zimbra is a product that does a little bit of everything and I can install locally, basecamp also does a little bit of everything project related yet its an online service. Spongecell is just a calendar. Airset a little bit of everything. Numsum is an online spreadsheet. Tadalist is just for lists....etc
If I want a best of everything i have to either replicate information all over the place and have to log in to 15 different services....or just deal with a good email service but crappy contacts (ex. gmail).
Standards like iCalendar are great, but that only relates to the data. Currently the difference between a good service and a bad service is not the accesibility to the data, but the usability of the site. We need a way to get all these "best of class" applications to talk to each other so that I can go from one site to the next seamlessly, share information AND take advantage of the interfaces each site uses.
What do you think? can it be done?

lowering costs vs increasing revenue.....

2005-12-11T20:47:00.000-06:00

and the end of service as we know it....

During the years I lived in the US (early through mid 90s) one thing that never failed to amaze me was the quality of customer service. Many might think I am exaggerating, but compared to where I grew up (Bolivia), service was incredible.

I used to use long distance service a lot. My friends and family where pretty far away from where I was. If I ever saw something wrong with my bill, all I'd have to do was call my long distance company, mention the problem (sometimes things that had actually been my fault), and they wouldn't question it. They'd credit my account.

Same with in store purchases. If for any reason you had to return something, no questions where asked, you could return it. Living in the US was living life in "the customer is always right" land.

Those days are gone. At some point in the very late 90s, maybe during the bubble....maybe early 2000s (I don't really know as I no longer live there).....at some point corporations gave up on the theory that good service increased profits. They went from creatively seeking ways to make the customer happy, and get more return business, to creatively seeking ways to reduce the amount spent on maintaining existing accounts. That of course means lower service. This includes outsourcing phone service to places where they barely speak US English, replying to email questions with canned responses, and giving service personnel instructions to shun the customer if necessary and not waste to much time on them (time is money...and they are trying to save money).

I still do a lot of business with the US. Online purchases, using an American credit card, paying from my American bank account, sending to my US based forwarding mailbox, etc. I also travel to the US once in a while and participate in real shopping at physical stores (a.k.a. brick'n'mortar shops). My experiences during the past years have been horrible. Each one worse than the previous. Sometimes annoying, sometimes frustrating, but in general just plain bad experiences.

Why? Are economies of scale (due to the internet's instant world reach) such that its more efficient to lose customers than to gain new unsuspecting ones? Is the new generation of corporate managers just not capable of increasing profits and is therefore forced to lower costs simply to maintain previous years revenues? Did they just give up? Is keeping stock prices high more important than making world class companies?

Stock pricing, it seems, is a big culprit in all of this. Publicly traded companies pay millions to there top management and their top management wants to keep their million paying jobs. In order to do this all they have to do is make the company look good on paper. As long as revenues seem higher they look good. Stock owners are happy and they get to keep their jobs. Stock now-a-days says nothing about the quality of a company. It doesn't say anything about profits, it doesn't say anything about the company's beliefs, growth prospects, etc...all stock says is what is in fashion. Today's stock darling is tomorrows AOL??? Its all a mirage, and its this mirage that has caused quality of service to go down the tubes.

Its quite ironic that a good portion of US consumers are also stock holders and they themselves push "their" companies into doing whatever it takes to increase revenues but then complain about the service they get. This is especially true about the online community. Chances are that most people that will read this blog (yes, both of you.....no, not you mom....mom, I'll explain later) are stock holders of a company that has given them bad service. Will these stock holders do anything about it? Nope...why? Because of the exact same reason that companies find its cheaper to get a new victim than to maintain a decent relationship with an existing customer. Because one person will not make a difference in the grand scheme of operation of multinational corporations. The stock holder knows that he can't punish the big company by selling his stock and doesn't have the power to make a difference in running the company...so he might as well keep the stock and hope that his bad service experience is made up by his stock gains. The big company on the other side of the dilemma, can afford to lose a customer, but can't afford to hire better qualified staff, or (if the case be) have their qualified staff waste their quality time with one customer.

So all this adds up to....bad service and us having to learn to deal with it. Some of you might point out the priceritephoto deal that happened a couple of weeks ago, and how one blogger was able to get his revenge. This is really nice, but its got a major problem. Now these stories will start surfacing all the time. After all I am pretty sure most bloggers get bad service quite often (seems there are few good service stories out there...though there are), and once everybody starts blogging about their specific bad stories nobody will care and the blogosphere will become one more epinions like space.

So what to do about this? My theory is we can't do much. We created this ourselves. I think all we can do is just wait....with enough time, I am pretty sure the cycle of bad service will come to an end. This will most likely happen in several years...when service reaches some new low and a new company will offer a little higher prices but excellent pricing...and people will notice...and it will grow...and others will try to copy the "new formula"....and then companies will differentiate themselves by the quality of service they provide...and then the cycle will start again.

anyone know how to point a domain to blogspot?

2005-12-09T19:58:00.000-06:00

I own a domain and want to point a host to blogspot.
I tried creating a CNAME something like

myblog CNAME gkrawiec.blogspot.com.

but even though it brings me to blogspot all I get is a
blank page with the words OK.

any ideas?

the IM as my PIM.....

2005-12-09T19:06:00.000-06:00

since I wrote about instant messengers, and bitched at the useless stuff they have added, I might as well write a bit about what I think they should add.

I should start with this...to me IM should not be just IM but my basic communication platform. My communications and my personal information manager. It should host everything only and it should go with me wherever I go and log in...regardless of what computer I sit at. That being said. I'd say my ideal IM would start with most of the features skype v1.x has offered plus:

1)grouping of contacts AND configurable online status on a per group base. I should be able to have a friends group, a family group a work group, an ex girlfriends group, etc...and be able to set my work group to Busy (I want them to think I work hard).....my friends group to Online (I always have time for friends)....my family group to Away (I don't have to explain that one..you all have families....and of course, my ex girlfriends group to Invisible

2) multiple email addresses on the same interface (like trillian as far as multiple accounts go, but no need to have one on each IM)

3)more robust telephony features...forwarding between IMs, more complex follow me features (if not online forward to my deskphone, else to my home phone, else to my cell phone, else to voicemail), integration with company IM server (to not have to ask for permission when calling intercompany), etc, etc

4) better contact management....and by contact management I mean a full fledged addressbook. One that looks a lot like yahoo's online addressbook, but integrated to the IM. Why yahoo as an example? cause its the only one I know that has synchronization!!!! I don't want to import and export...I want to sync!!!

4) my bookmarks.....I have online bookmarks on del.icio.us, quite useful actually, but why not in my IM...afterall, this IM of mine will be everywhere I go, what's the point of me having to log on to del.icio.us if the bookmarks could be right there? (by the way, what's the point of the online bookmarks on the MSN search bar for IE? do they expect me to install that bar on every computer I use? I don't think so....installing an IM...That's a different story)

5) my calendar and to do items...for the same reasons as on the former ones.

If you think about it, the instant messenger can and should be an online PDA.
The IM is contact centric, and so is everything in a standard PIM. Why can't the basic IM interface evolve into that?

what the hell is skype doing....

2005-12-09T17:24:00.000-06:00

other than killing themselves?

Ok, so eBay bought skype for a ridiculous amount of money....fine...i dont care...it didn't cost me a cent and it didn't gain me a cent...but...
what the hell is skype doing now? Have you seen v2.0 beta? What kind of crap is that?

Lets go back a bit and analyze the history of instant messengers....rise and fall of IM brands according to me.

In the beginning there was ICQ....it was the first one...it was new...it was similar to Unix talk but included presence information...awesome....I was sold from day one. Then ICQ grew....and everybody I know got ICQ...and I was happy....and ICQ added features, and I was happy....and ICQ added more features...and then I was not so happy...initial configuration of ICQ became annoying (once set up it wasn't that bad...but remember....I am my neighborhoods friendly geek so I had to configure it for all friends and family too)....
Then came the rise of MSN Messenger... MSN had three features that where definite ICQ killers..the first one was the enter key...pressing enter would send the message...ICQ didn't have that...you had to press ctrl-enter (or some key combination like that) or press SEND with the mouse....as IM became more common, pressing the SEND button became annoying...MSN solved that. A simple ENTER made conversations much more fluid. The second feature was online storage of buddies. That was a big one too. ICQ required me to save buddies locally, back them up...copy them to another computer, install, etc. Using a friends computer (or a public terminal) didn't let me see if my users where online. MSN did. The third was simplicity. MSN started simple, it did what it had to do, messaging. That made MSN grow. Some people will say that the fact that windows messenger was included in windows made a difference...I doubt it, I don't buy it. But then messenger started to add "features". Some where useful (smilies as gifs) but most were crappy. Tabs made the interface cluttered, search boxes in the messaging window as well as the buddy list window where plain stupid. Adding remote assistance was a good idea, but the implementation was crappy (connections usually don't go through unless both have UPnP enabled routers). More and more and more crap has been added with time. Those useless avatars with moods, backgrounds, etc...all useless. In between a few good tools, but once again bad implementations. Example...audio. Good idea...lets have audio, but once again...requires UPnP and sip...connections take forever and with many sites they don't work because of the UPnP requirement. Same with video (which got to complex...there are video conferences, audio conversations, view webcam, etc....to many ways to do what essentially is the same....but actually use different protocols and formats...high complexity)...
ok, so now I am going to skip the part about AOL and yahoo...but they both did the same thing as MSN Messenger...they added useless features which made using the programs annoying.

So lets get back to skype.

Skype did things right from the very beginning. They concentrated on one feature...voice communications. They did it right. From the beginning betas audio thorough skype had several advantages over other implementations. 1) connections....it connected almost immediately on 99% of occasions. 2)sound quality...the voice quality was better than on analog phone conversations 3) simplicity....the whole program was mapped to its analog world counterparts...a ring sounded (surprisingly enough) like a ring. Ringback tone, busy tone, and all them....sounded just like they do in my phone....and the screen buttons used words/symbols I was used to (a phone, a hung up phone, etc). They called a call a "call" instead of "audio" as the others did. Skype was awesome, and I (as well as all my family) was happy. They added very useful features like skypein, skypeout, skype forward, voicemail, etc...all useful.

But then came the eBay buyout and now Skype 2.0....have you seen this abomination? What the hell are these people thinking? They arbitrarily changed all the sound events to what can easily be described as the "waterworld" motif. They created the worst implementation of contact grouping ever seen in instant messengers. They've added unneeded complexity, and have completely changed things in such a way that breaks with user expectations and comfort. They've added video which I suppose isn't such a bad idea (though I don't see anybody using video conferencing for anything other than cybersex). But other than video, all changed in skype 2.0 are for the worse. They also claim they will start adding all the useless crap (that's the 5 time I write crap in this post) that other messengers have already added (all the avatar, mood, background stuff).

Skype is in a position where they can differentiate themselves from the other IM's by being the "useful" IM...but instead it has opted to follow the herd and become the IM with features only 13 year olds will like. Since they intend to make eBay buyers use skype to communicate with sellers I wonder....is the 13 year old demographic that big in eBay?

Good luck skype....hopefully you will backtrack...otherwise...hello google talk...at least they have a history of leaving things simple.

can antispyware companies sell there service as "critics"?

2005-12-09T16:56:00.000-06:00

over the past few years, I've read about several spyware companies suing antispyware companies for including them in their lists as spyware... the latest I read about was 180 solutions suing zone labs. I don't really know how the past trials have ended, but I was wondering....what if antispyware companies stopped defining what is and what is not spyware with absolute terms? What if they started calling themselves "critics" and simply gave their opinion? This would all be simple legalese, but would it make a difference? I mean, a movie critic can claim a movie is bad and he wont get sued...even if his criticism causes people that respect that critic to not go see the movie.
In amazon and other stores (ok, I am not 100% sure about this in amazon) you get to see "other items" bought by a person whose opinion you respect. You pretty much click a button and see the recommended stuff. Could antispyware companies avoid costly lawsuits by calling themselves critics and have people that install their software agree to a statement like "I understand that by installing this program I am giving permission to YYYY company to block my computer from installing software they believe can be harmful"? would this fly?

I know some might say that that would allow the company to suddenly decide that MS office is bad and delete it from your drive...but I doubt they would do that...market forces would make them behave even though that phrase would give them extra "powers".

so are bloggers really influencers????

2005-12-09T16:21:00.000-06:00

a lot of bloggers out there are pretty proud of them being influencers, gatekeepers, etc....but other than influencing other geeks do tech bloggers have any influence over the other 99.999999999% of the planet? Scoble likes to think so, but his examples tend to always be about geeky stuff, I mean, its seems pretty obvious to me that a person will get more downloads from a post in a famous geek blog than from an article in a "major midwest newspaper."
I think that finally we have a way to prove this theory right or wrong...with hard numbers...on something that affects geeks and non-geeks alike. Music purchasing.

After the Sony rootkit fiasco, I was left pretty convinced (based on the online rage which was "mildly" perceptible) that even though few bloggers mentioned the word boycott, that that was what was going to happen: an uncalled, non-organized boycott on sony products (at least their music division).

Bloggers got the news item to be reported in major "real" publications and tv stations. Yet every time I read or watched the mainstream press I was left with a feeling the reporters had no idea what they were reporting and that normal humans would not give a damn.

So now we will finally see if bloggers are really "influencers", "mavens", etc (as Seth Godin calls them)...we just have to wait and see how far Sony music sales dip in the next few months. I doubt the difference would be caused purely by bloggers, so if it really happens, it will be proof positive or negative that indeed....geek blogging stuff permeates to other levels of society.

a multibillion dollar company of one....

2005-12-09T15:38:00.000-06:00

Apple definitely does nice products....I don't usually like the way they operate (they tend to be to limiting), but I cant argue with the fact that they look great. Great industrial design and great graphic design... they usually work well too... good hardware and relatively robust software (but I still tend not to like them)...

but I digress... what I want to talk about is Steve Jobs. The guy is pretty bright. Has a history of having been pretty bright all along. His iPod success is not a one time deal, but the continuation of one success after another (with few flops) he has always been at the forefront of technology. He has designed revolutionary products (I don't care who copied who) and has created a cult of followers that follow his every move, every word, and every product launch. So much so, that "Apple Computer" could easily be called "Steve Jobs Computer" and nobody would notice. Which is what I find a little risky. Apple's stock has been rising continuously, apples profits have skyrocketed thanks to the iPod, the new Intel based macs will probably continue or even increase the growth trend. But do people really like the products? lemmingly follow them because they find the products useful/better/etc? or do they just follow them because most reporters like anything and everything Steve Jobs has to offer? Obviously reporters affect the masses so if they like Steve, the masses will like Steve too.

So what would happen to apple if something happened to Steve Jobs? Lets say he quits or gets fired (it has happened before), or worse yet, what if he dies (he IS human even though most mac lovers don't see him that way....and humans have been known to die...it does happen).
What would happen to apple? Would it return to the disaster it was in the late 80s and early 90s? What would happen to its stock? Would apple be worth anything? What type of products would come out of apple?

According to most captchas, I am a computer...

2005-12-09T15:28:00.000-06:00

or so it seems....captchas at a bunch of places have become so distorted that I can barely read them myself. Its a good thing that some have a button that says "click to refresh" or something like that and create a new image.
Are they trying to weed out computers and OCR schemes, or just confuse the hell out of me? I have quite a lot of experience in OCR systems (as a user in large volume digitization projects) and can tell you that captchas could be a lot easier and computers would still not be able to read them...