Teknovis

I recently tried to avail of a Kellogg’s promotion. The promotion involved collecting 3 unique numbers from 3 different cereal boxes, entering these number online, and then printing a voucher for the free box of cereal.

It all sounded wonderfully simple, but it turned out to be a disaster! In fairness, it is not all Kellogg’s fault, because it chose two other companies to fulfil the promotion. Coinks was responsible for redeeming the collected numbers, and converting them into rewards. Couponstar was responsible for providing the printable vouchers. It is really this company that I am faulting!

In theory this should be a very simple process. Simply generate a PDF file that the user can download and print. However, Couponstar take a very different approach to this simple task. Its motivation is that it prevents users from printing the same coupon multiple times. It appears that this company has never heard of a photocopier!

Therefore, the complex process that I had to follow was:

1. I tried to avail of the offer from my house, but I was unsuccessful because Firefox and Ubuntu are not supported :(
2. I used another computer, and then discovered that virtual printers are not supported (I was trying to print to a PDF file).
3. I went back to my Ubuntu computer and started a virtual machine in VMware. Virtual machines are not supported either :(
4. I then tried to avail of the offer from a Windows computer in work. The application downloaded and installed. It then displayed a message saying that my vouchers would be printed shortly. The only problem was that it did not specify on which of the company printers (in separate parts of the building) my vouchers would be printed!
5. Ultimately, it did not print on any of them. Perhaps this is because the software could not communicate with the server, because it never asked me to specify my proxy settings!

At this stage I gave up!

I have written a letter of complaint to Kellogg’s :o Unfortunately, I had to send it using a form on its Contact Us web page. I wish that the email address was listed there so that I could use my favourite email client instead of having to use a small text area :(

I will update this blog if I get a response from Kellogg’s.

Tags: Firefox, Ubuntu, VMware

I had to download some new Dell drivers for an old desktop computer last weekend. I have always thought that Dell is the best computer manufacturer in terms of obtaining drivers. I simply love the way that you can enter the Service Tag number and you immediately get all of the relevant drivers! It is so convenient!

Dell has changed the download options since the last time I downloaded drivers. You must now choose between using the new Dell Driver Download Manager or the Internet Browser option. The former is a .NET application that must be installed before any files are downloaded. I think that this is a great way of making a simple process unnecessarily complicated! It appears that I am not the only person thinking this according to Dell Driver Download Manager and Dell Driver Download Manager is Optional.

So without any hesitation I chose the Internet Browser option. This tries to use FTP to download the drivers from ftp.us.dell.com. That would be fine, except that the firewall protecting me does not allow FTP :( Thankfully, Dell also allows access to ftp.us.dell.com using HTTP!

Unfortunately, it is impossible to correlate the drivers on the download page with the files on the FTP server using the file names :( At least I could not!

However, I did find another way:

1. Click on the File Title or the File Details of the driver to get more information about it.
2. Click on Installation Instructions to expand that section.
3. The name of the driver file appears in the first sentence!
4. Find the file on the FTP server in the appropriate directory, download, and enjoy :)

Knowing this last weekend would have saved me a lot of time!

Tags: .NET, Dell, FTP, HTTP

I read today that the W3C will stop developing XHTML 2 later this year, and it will focus on HTML 5.

I have not had direct experience with either of these standards. However, I have been using XHTML 1.0 and XHTML 1.1 for a long time for my personal web pages (including these web pages).

The full article is An epitaph for the Web standard, XHTML 2, and the official W3C announcement is XHTML 2 Working Group Expected to Stop Work End of 2009, W3C to Increase Resources on HTML 5.

Tags: HTML, W3C, XHTML

I came across a new search engine today called Searchme. I tried a few known searches on it, and I think that the results are not as good as the results on Google :o However, I really like the interface! It is very useful to see the rendered target page, and it is very easy to transition between results. However, perhaps this is just a novelty, and it might be too slow in reality.

Tags: Google, Searchme

I have been asked a few times why I chose the .eu TLD for this blog. Originally I considered a range of different TLDs, and the domain names that I was interested in were wildly available. Ultimately, my choice came down to the following factors (in no particular order):

• Cost: Everybody loves a bargain, and .eu domains are excellent value, as can be seen on Blacknight’s domain pricing web page.
• Simplicity: I love the fact that I can buy a .eu domain online in under 3 minutes.
• Privacy: I love my privacy! The only publicly available information about a person who owns a .eu domain is a contact email address and a contact language preference, as described in Can you remove my contact information from the WHOIS database?. It is really important to me that I remain anonymous, so that I do not get into difficulties with my employer! Also, I would not like somebody to be able to link my domains together due to the fact that they are all registered to me! The privacy policy of the .eu TLD is substantially better than any of the other domains that I considered using.
• Significance: I like what the EU represents, and this blog has an EU focus, so it makes sense to use a .eu domain.

Overall, the .ie ccTLD seems to be the worst TLD that I considered. It is very expensive, and I do not see any return for this extra cost. They are very regulated, and hence they are awkward to register. Yet this does not seem to prevent the registration of almost any domain. For example, and individual cannot register his/her first name (see IE Personal Domain Names) yet many first name domains exist because they were registered as sole traders!

I would be very interested in knowing what reasons other people consider important or unimportant when choosing TLDs for personal domains!

Tags: Blacknight

I noticed during the week that tinyurl.ie will soon cease to exist! I find this a bit surprising because it cannot have cost much to operate. Also, there is probably greater demand now for URL shortening services than ever before!

Strange :|

Tags: tinyurl.ie

The online version of the print version of The Irish Times is very impressive: http://irishtimes.newspaperdirect.com/

Unfortunately it is not free, but most of the content can be found on its main web site :o

Tags: The Irish Times

I have another web site that is unrelated to this one. I have had it for approximately a year. However, I now need to use Twitter in conjunction with this web site.

Unfortunately, the Twitter account name that matches my domain name has already been registered :( However, it was registered almost 2 years ago, contains 1 post, is not following anybody, and has no followers. So it is as inactive or as disused as possible!

I tried searching the Internet for advice from people who were in similar situations. I did not find a lot of information, and the best article I found was How to Secure an Unused Twitter Account. I was initially very optimistic when I read that Twitter releases unused accounts if requested. However, Twitter no longer provides this service according to Help Resources/Terms of Service and Rules policies/Name Squatting :( Twitter might release inactive accounts, although its policy is contradictory:

Accounts that are inactive for more than 6 months may be removed without further notice. Twitter is not currently releasing inactive/squatter accounts unless in cases of infringement.

I have followed the advice given in the first article, and I will update this blog with my progress!

Tags: Twitter

I am hearing and reading a lot about Bing this week! Microsoft seems to be putting a lot of resources behind it! I have not tried using it yet. This is mostly because I am happy with Google, so there is no real incentive for me to change my search engine. I previously had very bad experiences with Cuil. (I must write about them here :o )

Today somebody showed me the Maps feature of Bing. I thought that the interface seemed nice, and the satellite photos were good. It certainly is as good as Google Maps.

However, then I was shown the Bird’s Eye view! This really impressed me!

Bird's Eye view of Camp Nou in Bing Maps

Above you can see the Bird’s Eye view of Camp Nou (home of the 2009 Champions League winners).

Tags: Cuil, Google, Microsoft

Last week Google announced Google Wave. It is interesting, although I am unsure how successful it will be in reality :o

To learn more about it read Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication? and Google Wave: A Complete Guide.

Tags: Google