Overstock Receives Failing Grade For Customer Service

Posted on the March 5th, 2010 under Editorial by

ИконописПравославни иконииконипочистванехолови гарнитуриDue to an apparently apathetic Overstock customer service department, UPS had to mail us a letter by US mail to arrange for the delivery of our treadmill. When we originally placed the order we updated our contact information to fix an incorrect phone number but evidently the customer service reps that we spoke with didn’t update it or it didn’t get entered in the right places.

The Netflix Prize and the Kentucky Derby

Posted on the October 31st, 2009 under Editorial,Technology by

In a previous article, I speculated that Netflix might be trying to get out of paying the winning team due to a technicality. While my speculation turned out to be completely unfounded, the final 30 days of the contest were as exciting as the Kentucky Derby.

Netflix Prize Winners May Be Disqualified

Posted on the July 8th, 2009 under Editorial,Social,Software,Technology by

I’ve been following the Netflix Prize for years.  This is the contest that gives all comers a chance to try and beat the formidable Cinematch algorithm that Netflix uses to give customers highly targeted recommendations.  According to a recent email, Netflix may be preparing to announce the disqualification of the leading team “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos” who submitted results that beats Cinematch by the contest’s goal of 10%.

How to Opt Out of Twitter Spam

Posted on the March 29th, 2009 under Social by

I joined Twitter a little over a year ago and have been learning how to be a good twitizen ever since. I would follow people that were interesting or who were talking about topics that interested me.  When I first joined, it seemed to be populated mainly with real people but as time passed I started seeing twitter accounts that were automated.  I would follow someone and within seconds or minutes I received a direct message thanking me for following them. I know that Twitter has an API but I couldn’t imagine that everyone I was receiving the direct messages from knew how to do that.

TCP3 Tiny URL Google AppEngine Experiment

Posted on the September 11th, 2008 under Editorial by

Any application that needs to scale needs to designed to do so from the beginning.  Or at least that’s what I used to think.  Even when Amazon introduced EC2 and S3 there were still design requirements that you needed to consider.  In fact, I actually started this project with S3 as the back-end.  The idea was to store the URLs on S3 which had very quick response times and use quick scalable hosting (I hadn’t decided which hosting service at that time) with round-robin DNS to scale the front-end.  It was a simple architecture but it would have worked.  But…before I was able to go very far with the project, Google launched AppEngine.  AppEngine took an entirely different approach to scalability.  Use their SDK and platform and don’t even bother with scalability.   So, I decided to switch over and give it a try.

http://tcp3.com

This project is the ongoing development effort based on that decision.   I will describe and write about design decisions, feature plans and problems and roadblocks caused by the AppEngine platform.
Oh, and feel free to comment.  I will approve any and all constructive comments both postitive and negative.

Top 10 Most Useful Free Apps for iPod Touch

Posted on the August 30th, 2008 under Editorial by

With the new 2.0 firmware and the new App Store on iTunes you can get most of the functionality that you need without jailbreaking.

The following list are the apps that I use daily and can’t live without. As an added benefit, all of these are also free apps available from the iTunes Music Store.

Privacy Series: The Right and the Expectation of Privacy on the Internet

Posted on the August 14th, 2008 under Privacy by

Do you have a right to online privacy?  Do you actually have online privacy?  Most people who use the Internet have no idea of how little privacy they actually have.  The searches you perform are not private.  These are saved by the major search engines.  The sites you visit are not private.  Your visits are recorded in the site’s log files.  The ad companies use cookies to track your interests by keeping records of your surfing habits.  No privacy there.  So do you actually have privacy on the Internet?  If you are like most people, the statements I just made will scare you or simply piss you off.

 

iTouch Emergency Medical Procedures Manual

Posted on the June 2nd, 2008 under Software,Technology by

The following text describes how to restore a non-responsive iTouch after a failed jailbreak attempt.

Symptoms of diseased iTouch:

  • History of failed attempts at jailbreaking
  • Non-responsive to touch
  • Displays pages of scrolling white text before hanging
  • Only displays black screen
  • Permanently displays restore icon

If your iTouch is presenting with any of the preceding symptoms or other similar signs, proceed with the following proceeds until the patient responds to treatment.

Twitter Killer or just another Social Networking Toy?

Posted on the June 1st, 2008 under Editorial,Software,Technology by

Low-karmer plurk creatureI was checking out my twitters and noticed a post by Leo Laporte (Twit.tv) about a new social service called Plurk.  My first reaction is that this is extremely cool!  My second reaction is that i’m not sure it knows what it wants to be when it grows up.

Jailbreaking 1.1.4 iTouch on Windows in 1 Simple Step!

Posted on the April 15th, 2008 under Editorial,Software,Technology by

Ok.  It simply doesn’t get any easier than this.  I’ve gone through all the backflips (you can read about them on my blog) and have downgraded, upgraded, sidegraded and jailbroken iTouches in just about every way possible on Windows.  I’ve read about the ZiPhone jailbreak and have periodically checked the status of that but on previous visits, it looked like it was a work in progress for Windows anyway.  So, I tried it tonight…and it worked so quickly I wasn’t even sure it was jailbroken, but sure enough, the Installer icon is on my home page ready for me to add any apps that I might want.  So here’s what you need to do…