Archive for November, 2007
Ticked Tuesday: Dear Questioning Customers
Why do you even bother talking to me? I mean seriously. I’m in activations, we want yours service, we want your money and will do everything next to ‘putting out’ to do that. So why on earth would I bother lying to you? I mean seriously, do I look like customer care?
If you call up telling me you talked to somebody earlier and want to pay us now and get it going, I’m totally for that. But when you don’t give me ANY of the right information for the number I can’t very well do that for you. But then to question my integrity and tell me I’m not seeing what I am is quite annoying. I mean I’ve looked for you through the phone number you gave me, your name, your SSN, your friend’s name whose account it’s supposed to be on and you’re still not there: You’re not telling me something.
Long story short, I have to create the new account with a new number for you or you’re not getting anything, sorry Babe.
Have a T-riffic day,
Jeff
Can’t write?
It annoys me when people say “Oh I can’t write”. I can understand if you’re a complete idiot or something, but for the most part I think people are just lazy. If you have a topic, you can write about it. There are key factors to doing this (especially with blogging, since it doesn’t have to be a novel).
- State the name of your topic. If you’re reproducing something you read, include a mention/link such as ‘that I read on whatever.
- What is it? What does it do? Why did it happen? Who made it happen?
- What use is it? To whom would it be a use? What can happen now that it has been made/done?
- Personal views on it.
- Where can you get more info on it? (in the age of blogging, links make you look smarter)
Of course you’re not going to put it in list form, and those questions have to be modified a bit depending on your topic but for the most part you can fit them into anything you’re talking about. If need be, write it as a list and then turn the facts into sentences to make pretty paragraphs. Honestly, writing isn’t hard if you break it down and put in what is needed.
Firefox: Fancy Numbered Tabs
I found another helpful Firefox to display today, this time it’s called Fancy Numbered Tabs. If the name wasn’t a complete give away, the extension simply changes the class close button on tabs into numbers, thus making it easier when using the the CTRL + number function in Firefox to jump to tabs. Can also be helpful when trying to explain to somebody how to do something (and they won’t let you push them out of the way 
)
See also Lifehacker
Education VS Netucation
A colleague and myself recently had a conversation about what was truly a more effective and useful: Education (through traditional methods such as university classes and organized methods) or netucation (the idea of self-teaching through your own methods and gathering information online from various sources).
Though education has the benefit of a more organized and structured education environment, it’s often costly as well as not completely useful information. Netucation on the other hand, allows the ’student’ go form their own lessons and learn what they want to learn (or what they can find). The biggest flaw with netucation, however, is the fact that it depends on the person and the effort they put into it whether they’re able to education themselves to a competent level.
The topic boils down to the question “Do you want somebody who thinks he can do it, or somebody who has done it?” Just something to think about
Firefox: Morning Coffee
If you’re like me, even with all the tricks and tips in the world you’re still going to be rushed in the morning because you wanted to sleep those extra minutes. Well the Morning Coffee extension for Firefox can help out there.
Everybody has those sites they check out on a daily basis be it gossip, horoscope, daily news, webcomics, whatever. For me it’s all about the webcomics, I must have around 2 dozen of them now that I read on religious basis. However they don’t all update everyday, some are only Mon/Wed/Fri so it’s a waste of time to memorize that for each of them: Thus where Morning Coffee comes in. With morning coffee you put the site address in the list for that day and when that day is upon you click the Coffee button and Voila, your sites for the day open.
I honestly love this extension, I love being able to sit here and read my ‘morning coffee’ while actually drinking my morning coffee (and eating Eggos!).
Morning Coffee can be downloaded on Mozilla’s site HERE
ListBums
I got a request earlier this week to review ListBums and the second I looked at the front page said to myself “Wow, this looks like it has something to offer, I’ll leave it until I have time to give it a proper review.” I’m glad I did.
PROs
+ Easy to use: Click and type. Editing is simple, double click on the section (title or description) that you want to edit and correct it without the need to go to another ‘editing’ screen which is useful.
+ RSS feed enabled for user or EACH LIST!
+ You can attach an image/video, related link and description to each list item.
+ Others can add comments to lists as well as add items to the lists you create.
+ ‘Digg’-like system allowing users to add points to lists for rating/popularity purposes.
+ Easy embedding. Just go to the bottom of the list, choose your colors, paste the URL. Sure you could just make a list using HTML on your site, but why? This way they can link back to ListBums to use the comments/additonal features as well.
+ Fun layout/theme. Funky faces, tons of graphical elements and (for the most part) easy to navigate.
- When creating list you have to add the item then add the description after you add it to the list. A field where you can put in both item title and description before adding would save time.
- I can’t for the life of me get the ‘reverse order’ button to work!
- Pain in the ass to figure out where the widget part was. It’s at the bottom of the list you’re viewing. Easy once you know where to look, I was looking for a ‘widget’ button for at least 5 minutes at the top of the screen.
In comparison to Listography (which I reviewed awhile ago here) I think ListBums is in the lead as far as quality goes. Listography seems to have simple ‘ it’s there and it works ‘ look to it, where as ListBums has more of a ‘ look I listed stuff and it’s pretty! ‘. That brings me to think that though both social sites based on lists, the targeted markets would vary. I’d think that Listography would be more for people who want to just get something down and be done with it, where as ListBums is for those who want to have fun with the lists.
Sniffles for sale
I’m sick. I’m never sick, but I’m sick. Throat is killing me, can’t stop coughing and my nose is running a marathon (I’ve gone through an entire roll of toilet paper blowing my nose in the past 24 hours!). The worst part is every time I blow my nose I cough, which then makes my eyes run. This sucks. But even though I feel like I want to just curl up into a corner and die right now: I have work at 7am. Work sucks. Anybody want to just give me money to be sick? That would be fantastic.
I did have a request though to review a site, and I told them I’d do it this week. So come hell or high water I’ll have at least the title and a ‘yay or nay’ verdict up by Friday, even if I have to write it out on paper and mail it to all…6 of my readers.
Anyway, I’m going to pop a pill and go call my cab in hopes that morning coffee and the joy of spreading this wretched cold to others will make me chipper enough not to die today at work. Tootles.