Who Clicks on the Epic Fail?

I recently had this epic fail of a spam-mail in my inbox:



Quite frankly, I couldn't think of anything less hot than this, but I suppose there's no accounting for taste.

This got my thinking - although I find this particular case laughable, if people didn't make money from spam mail, they wouldn't send it. So who clicks on it all?

I'll tell you. My family members. My mother. My grandmother. Other perfectly intelligent but non tech-savvy people who don't know and shouldn't have to know any better. But what can we do? Not much it would seem, other than to drive home the message that they should be deleted without clicking on them.

I can't explain to my grandmother why she is getting e-mails for certain enlargement products any more than she can explain to me the attraction of Bridge, because it would go in one ear and out the other, and as anyone who does family technical support knows - that's a very awkward conversation.

What to do?

Will Visual Studio run on an Asus Eee 901 PC?

In a word, yes.

I've had an Asus Eee 901 PC for about six months now, and I love it as a web browsing platform, especially when combined with slickness of Google Chrome. But often, I'll want to tinker with a C# idea in the evening without slinking off to the study like some kind of social pariah. This got me thinking about whether the Eee could handle Visual Studio.




I opted for Visual Studio 2005 Express rather than 2008, and declined to install both MSDN and SQL Server Express. Installation itself is a task for the patient, as the Solid State Drive is not the fastest thing.

But once installed, it's very usable indeed. I wouldn't like to spend a lot of time writing code on a 1024x600 screen, but overall I think I can declare it a success - I was half-expecting it to wilt like a tulip in a themonuclear explosion.

It has also served to highlight how much I now rely on the new C# 3.0 syntax on a daily basis, though. Maybe I'll try and shoehorn 2008 on to the poor thing soon.

More iPhone Love

Much as I love my 3G iPhone, I have two main beefs with it:

• No Copy and Paste
• No Flash in Safari

But now there's news that at least one of these is being addressed, as it's confirmed that Adobe and Apple are working together on Flash for iPhone.

Hurrah!

The Authentic XBox 360 Red Ring of Death Experience

It finally happened, earlier this year.

Inevitable, really. Just about everyone I know with an Xbox 360 had already had the Red Ring of Death experience, and now it was my turn. My turn just as I had some quality time to myself to play Guitar Hero III, and Gears of War 2. Murphy, I'm looking at you.

The point of this however, is to provide an insight into the returns process.


Breakdown Day (Tues 30th December)

• XBox dies
• Air is blue
• Sign in to Xbox Live on PC
• Register Console Serial Number Details
• Check warranty status (I'm was fortunate in that the RRoD is now covered for three years from date of purchase)
• Request Repair
• UPS Shipping Label received via e-mail
• Label printed

Third Day (Thur 1st January)

• Decide if I have a New Year hangover
• Negative
• XBox wrapped in bubble wrap by yours truly, and placed in a large shoebox
• Shipping label attached

Fourth Day (Fri 2nd Jamuary)

• UPS collect XBox
• UPS Man looks at the size of the box and wryly grimaces, "Another XBox?
• I nod
• Suspect UPS man secretly pleased the the XBox 360 is keeping him in a job

Sometime the week after

• XBox arrives in the German repair centre

Sixteenth Day (Wednesday 14th January)

• UPS Deliver XBox to my neighbour
• UPS put a card through my door

Not bad. Sixteen days for my XBox to go from broken, to Germany, and subsequently into the clutches of Next Door, even with the inevitable backlog due to it being over the Christmas period. The DVD drive had also been replaced, which was odd because I didn't think it was broken. I'm guessing this was done to prevent the disk scratching problem that is known about. Was slightly concerned that they are being returned with the instructions that they can be left with a neighbour, because I don't know my neighbours that well. They could be anyone. However, my neighbour grudgingly obliged and handed over the goods, much Guitar-Heroing of debatable quality took place and all was well.

DateTime Hell and What's Up With Facebook for iPhone?

If there's one area in particular that can make developing software seem like a chore, then it's DateTime problems. Spend long enough working as a developer and chances are you will encounter some bug or problem that deals with DateTimes that has you pulling your hair out.

Sometimes, it's jut a case of attention to detail. Does the person you're developing software for really need to see their shipping times down to the nearest millisecond? Probably not. If not, don't show that level of detail on your UI. It may well come out of SQL Server like that, but chances are no-one wants to see it.

Famously, even most members of the non-technical public will have heard of the Y2K problem. But on a day to day basis - it's the mundane things like leap years, leap seconds, varying numbers of days in a month, time zones and logic that uses the exact time when you only wanted it to be specific to a day that cause the serious headaches.

But here's the thing. Horrible though they may be, DateTime issues are, to my mind, some of the most critical and they need high priority on any fix list. Got your dates and times wrong? Then you're displaying wrong and in many cases, useless information to your customers.

What's up with Facebook's iPhone app then? Despite the recent release of an update, the DateTime issue persists, where I see my friend's status updates several hours askew, and often appearing in a completely different order to that which they occurred.

Given the size of the user base, not fixing what looks suspiciously like a time zone and ordering bug is taking a bemusing amount of time to solve. It's probably a dreary and uninteresting problem to fix, I can sympathise with that - but if it takes much longer to resolve I can't forgive.