Year: 2011

Categories
Australia Media Politics Shoddy Journalism

Dear World’s Media

I know I shouldn’t expect people to, like, know stuff any more and I know it doesn’t really matter, but I post this here because:

1. I can’t believe that I seem to be the only person in the world who has noticed; and
2. It’s not often that that English degree I spent three years studying for comes in handy.

According to the story on the front page of today’s The Age, and apparently every other media outlet in the world, President Obama, speaking at a white tie function at Buck House last night, “concluded his toast with a quote from Shakespeare’s Richard III“:

Obama concluded his toast with a quote from Shakespeare’s Richard III.

‘To her Majesty the Queen, to the vitality of the special relationship between our peoples and in the words of Shakespeare, ‘to this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”

Except he didn’t, did he, because that quote isn’t from Richard the third, it’s the John of Gaunt, “This Other Eden” speech from Richard the second:

This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England

(Funny how he left out the bit about “against the envy of less happier lands”, can’t think why…)

It’s the sort of thing you might expect a good sub editor to pick up.

Oh. Oops. This is the sort of thing that happens why you sack them all, isn’t it…

Meh. Richard II, Richard III. It’s all the same thing really isn’t it?

Categories
teh internets

Escape From The Mobile Web

I’ve moaned about stupid design patterns on the mobile web before, but here’s another example of just how frustrating it can be when web developers decide to lock you out of their site just because you happen to be using a mobile device.

This time the culprits are Singapore Airlines, one of my favourite airlines. Shame their web presence sucks.

I have a flight coming up shortly and there’s a great big flight cancelling ash cloud floating over Europe at the moment, so I thought I might check the airline website for an update on any cancellations.

Unfortunately if I head over there on my iPhone, I get this:

20110524-212656.jpg

Oh great. I’ve been “automatically redirected to Singapore Airlines mobile which is optimised for mobile devices”. I just love it when that happens.

Ok. Let’s click the link to go to their mobile website:

Um. Ok. Sure. I’ll agree to anything if you just let me in to your site.

But then there’s this:

What? I just want to look at your website to find out whether you are cancelling flights. Why do you need my phone number? What are you going to do with it?

But ok I’ll type in some random numbers just to get through the next hurdle. Finally we get to the site:

Oh. That’s it? There might be a link to flight status down the bottom, but that means putting in an individual flight number or route. If you just want to find a general news item about the ash cloud like the one they have on their full desktop website but you happen to be using an iPhone or similar then you’re out of luck.

No link to go to the full site. Nothing.

Thanks web development team at Singapore Airlines. I love it when developers decide on my behalf that my device isn’t capable of rendering their site and lock me out.

Luckily, there’s a solution to this and all other future annoying mobile web related issues: a bit of Googling leads me to this website recommending an app called “Journey Web Browser Lite”–a Safari replacement that includes one genius feature: browser user agent spoofing.

Settings -> Pretend To Be -> Firefox 3.0

In your face annoying web developers:

(Also: look! Look at that battery meter: it cost me 5% of my battery to take those screenshots. Gotta love the battery life on a two year old iPhone…)

Categories
Shoddy Journalism

£136.40? No Wonder They Paid Cash

Can’t help thinking there might be a missing word in this headline or something.

£136.40 cash paid for UK's most expensive flat ever

Either that or property prices back home have taken a massive hit…

Categories
Media Shoddy Journalism teh internets UK

Google To Destroy Music Industry, World

In the olden days it was a lot easier for newspapers to pass off ridiculous claims as facts because anyone who wanted to verify them would have to go to some serious effort to do so. These days, however, we have teh internets, and fact checking has suddenly become a whole lot easier.

So if you’re going to make claims about teh internets, then you’d better be pretty sure that your claimed facts are, you know, actually true.

Case in point number 247 is this article in the Daily Mail: Google threatens to destroy not only pop sensation Adele, but Britain’s film and music industries.

Scroll down towards the end of the article and you’ll find this astonishing claim:

One only has to switch on the computer, call up the Google search engine and type in the name of a star like Adele to understand why the digital channel is such a threat to the UK’s performers, and for that matter our whole creative industry.

Nine out of the first ten websites which pop up on Google’s search engine are run by pirates who have downloaded Adele’s output and offer it online far more cheaply than official copyrighted sites and High Street retailers.

In effect, Google has granted these piracy sites a licence to steal. Instead of the proceeds going into future investment in artists, it ends up in the hands of internet buccaneers.

Really? Nine out of the top ten search results for “Adele” are “run by pirates”? Did you really think you could make a claim like that and nobody would check?

(And by “far more cheaply”, I presume you mean “free”, no? Unless you really believe your claim that any proceeds are someone ending up in the hands of “internet buccaneers”…)

Anyway. So I turned on my computer and “called up the Google search engine” and did just that. Your mileage may vary, because Google now gives you geographically specific and personalised search results, but when I try that very search I get her official website, her wikipedia page, her MySpace page, a YouTube link, her Facebook page, last.fm, a lyrics website and Amazon.com.

Hmm. No pirates there.

Now I’m not suggesting that it isn’t possible to find copies of Adele’s music by doing a Google search, but you do have to specifically go looking for it. And until someone releases an album called “BitTorrent Download”, you won’t really be able to accuse Google of promoting piracy.

Actually, that’s sort of the point of a search engine–Google’s job is to index the internet, not to pick and choose what is worthy of inclusion in their index. Blaming them for the fact that certain websites show up in their search results seems to be the very definition of shooting the messenger.

Unless you have some other specific reason to be annoyed at Google. Oh, hang on…

So dominant has it become that it has helped to destroy great swathes of other media in its wake, from regional newspapers in Britain and the United States to business directory companies.

Ah. I see.

Categories
Australia Customer Service UK

Your Call Is Important To Us

I was transported back to an earlier time, last night, as I sat listening to hold music being told that my call is important but that all the customer service agents are busy right now, and I realised that I don’t really do this any more. Much as I loved living in London, it seems as if I was always hanging on hold trying to sort out some problem or other. I still remember the time that I spent so long on hold to Homechoice/Tiscali trying to sort out some problem or other with my broadband that I listened to an entire Leona Lewis album before someone answered. Happy days…

But I can’t remember the last time anything like that happened.

Maybe this is the real reason why I haven’t been blogging so much since we moved to Melbourne. There just isn’t enough to get pissed off about here (and on the rare occasions when I have to call my lovely ISP, iinet, they even do this wonderful thing where you just hang up and they call you back, and then use the caller ID to pull up your account details before you even start talking to them…)

Of course it goes without saying that the company I was on hold to was in the UK: I’ve decided that it’s finally time to extricate myself from the company that hosts my other web presence. Originally this was hosted by an excellent small hosting company called Freedom2Surf, who I picked about 10 years ago when I first set up that site in a vague attempt to make it look like I’d done at least one extra-curricular thing at uni that I could put on my CV. And they were great for about 5 years, until they got taken over. And taken over. And taken over again. Following the most recent takeover they have been completely rebranded and I now find myself a customer of Talk Talk Business.

I’ve moaned about them before, but general laziness has always kept me from doing anything about it. But with the latest rebrand the old F2S website account area is gone. I used to be able to log in and check my account details, see past invoices, and update my account settings, address and billing details. Now I have the My Talk Talk Business Portal, which provides almost zero functionality. I can log in to this and see that I have an account, but that’s about it. No invoices, no pricing, no indication when my hosting or registrations expire–everything just leads to a message telling me to phone a UK 0800 number if I want to do anything. That’s a bit of a deal breaker for me, though, given that I live on the other side of the world now and it’s not massively convenient to have to call someone in the UK whenever I need to do something…

I can’t even update my address details because their wonderful portal has been coded to accept only UK postcodes and phone numbers. Oh and when they rebranded they also sent me a letter in the mail to my house in Australia containing my login password, which they had apparently been storing in plain text all this time. Oops.

So it’s time to sort this out: unfortunately I just paid for a new year’s hosting and registration before the rebrand, but as a first step I thought I’d try to get the .co.uk domain that I have registered with them (www.pastemagazine.co.uk) moved over to my other (cheaper, better) host (who are probably preparing to sell out to Talk Talk as we speak…) so that they will be the ones who bill me when it comes up for renewal in a couple of months. 20 minutes of hold music later, and having been passed between 3 departments, I finally get through to someone who can help me:

“Oh yes. You need to send us an email to request that, as all cancellations have to be in writing.”

Thanks. Wonderful. Thanks so much for writing that on your website… Now can I have the last half hour of my life back?

Categories
Misdirected Emails Spam teh internets

Dear Matt Armstrongs Of The World

I know I got there first with the best Gmail address for our name, but just because you’re jealous it doesn’t mean you have to give out my email address to people and pretend it’s yours…

So no, “The Cast of Disneyland Paris”, I don’t think I can give you feedback on my recent visit there, given that I haven’t left Australia for over a year.

I also won’t be reviewing my recent stay at the Hilton Taba Resort Nelson Village in Egypt (although what I thought I was doing there casually taking my resort holiday in the middle of a revolution is a mystery to me–I guess at least one of the other Matts is actually a dick…)

It gets worse. Apparently I am also in the real estate business, profiting from people’s misery by selling foreclosed properties in Indiana. But I won’t be showing you around this one. Maybe you’d be better off contacting the Matt Armstrong who’s listed on the site instead of emailing me. Just a thought.

And Matt, if you’re going to sign up to a restaurant loyalty program, you might want to include your own email address. Although having said that, since their emails have an “edit profile” link at the bottom, I was able to log in and see the address and phone number of my property in Baton Rouge, LA. Perhaps I’ll turn up one day and move in.

Actually, perhaps I should consider some kind of identity fraud on people with the same name as me. Shouldn’t be too difficult, because apparently they are all idiots.

Categories
Australia teh internets

Crikey! OzBargain Wants To Give Away My Email Address…

So I was signing up for an account at consumer-discounts-website OzBargain, when I happened to notice something a bit odd in the terms and conditions I was agreeing to…

Terms and Conditions of Use

Account Inactivity

After a period of inactivity, OzBargain reserves the right to disable or terminate a user’s account. If an account has been deactivated for inactivity, the email address associated with that account may be given to another user without notice to you or such other party.

I’m sorry, what? If I don’t use my account for a bit you are going to re-assign my email address to someone else? My email address? Have you checked with Google on that? ‘Cause I don’t think they’d let you give away my Gmail address to someone else…

Or did you just copy your terms and conditions from someone else without checking whether it made any sense in the context of your website…?

Categories
teh internets

Mobile Friendly

Once again Randall is on the money here.

Attn: developers of mobile websites. If I follow a link from Google (or, say, an obfuscated short url from someone’s Twitter post) to a specific page on your website, by all means sniff my user agent string and give me a mobile-friendly layout because I’m on an iPhone, if that’s your thing, but don’t dump me on the homepage of your mobile website.

Here’s an example: had to look something up on the website of aussie supermarket chain woolies, but it’s basically impossible to browse any content on their main website on an iPhone. Direct links in from Google dump you at i.woolworths.com.au. So you hit that “visit the normal website” link down the bottom and get the homepage of their main site. Oh and there’s the link to that thing you were looking for…. So you tap the link and… oh you’re on an iPhone? Yep back to i.woolworths.com.au for you. Brilliant.

Categories
teh internets

IMDb’s Version

Ah. Free movies.

When we lived in London there were so many free movie screening tickets available if you knew where on the internet to look, that we pretty much saw one every week. Sadly they’re somewhat thinner on the ground over here in Melbourne, but there’s still the odd one every now and again. Tonight it was Barney’s Version, a bittersweet tale of the “fully lived life of the impulsive, irascible and fearlessly blunt Barney Panofsky”, played by the always excellent Paul Giamatti.

I mention this only because, when I turned to the internet to check something, I was highly amused by the IMDb’s page on the film.

Just look at that cast list:

List of minor characters from the film Barney's Version

They’ve really summarised the most important people in the film there, haven’t they: “Productions Executive #1”, “Judge at Rome Wedding”, and who could forget the pivotal role that “O’Malley Director #1” plays in the story.

At least they did remember to include Mr Giamatti in the cast list, even if they forgot to list Dustin Hoffman and Rosamund Pike (who just played really minor characters like, um, his father and the love of his life…)

But nevermind, the cast list did actually answer the question that sent me to the internets in the first place: there in third place was the answer to my question. Yes that guy who appeared for a split second playing a Mountie in the rubbish TV show that Barney produces was indeed Paul Gross, him off of 90s Canadian Mountie-themed drama Due South…

Categories
teh internets

Over Sharing

Really, iiNet? Someone been having a dirty protest have they?

Our office is full of number 2s this month...