Barracuda Spam Filter Outlook Plug-in: Who Coded This Thing?

Poorly-written software ticks me off. Big time. There’s nothing worse than using a piece of software that performs poorly, or worse, bring instability to your whole computer system. Barracuda Networks has a server-side spam-blocking solution that works quite well and has been implemented by my hosted Exchange provider – but only once it’s been trained with 200 good (ham) and bad (spam) email messages. That’s 400 messages in total. How do you train it the fastest? By installing an Outlook plugin that gives you a little green check-mark icon and a red “x” icon. You select the messages you want to train, click the button…and watch Outlook 2003 completely lock up for several minutes. When an email comes in, Outlook 2003 and my entire PC also lock up for 10-30 seconds. Every. Single. Time. It drives me nuts. The other day I decided to try and get in touch with someone from Barracuda Networks to find out if they had a new plug-in coming out, perhaps one that would work with Outlook 2007 and suck less. Here’s the transcript from the online chat tool they offer for communication with customers.

Jason Dunn: When will there be an updated Outlook plugin released?

You are now speaking with Ann of sales.

Ann: Hi, Is this for your Spam Firewall?

Jason Dunn: No, for the Outlook client that the customer (me) uses

Jason Dunn: To tag messages as spam/not spam

Jason Dunn: It’s really a horrible piece of software under Outlook 2003, and I’m afraid to even install it on Outlook 007

Ann: Let me transfer you to our Helpdesk and they will further assist you. Pls. hold

Please hold while being transferred to kamaal of Support.

Jason Dunn: Very well.

Your party has left this session.

Jason Dunn: Hello?

Jason Dunn: Wow. This is sure some impressive customer service.

<disconnect>

I kid you not, that was the “conversation”. A bump to another department, then the customer service agent dumps the chat. It might have been a technical glitch, but that doesn’t say much for the chat software they’re using. Maybe their Outlook plug-in team designed the chat software…

The New Cardboard Cut-Out?

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That’s something called a “Fathead“, which I’d never heard of before today. Great name for a company, stupid name for a product. They’re vinyl images that stick to your wall, can be removed and re-applied easily, and they have Star Wars images. Cool.  I stumbled into the site through one of those random click-fests that one sometimes finds oneself in while “smurfing the interweeb”. The Darth Vadar model sells for $119 USD,  or you can buy two for $144. They also have a Chewbaca version, a Yoda version and a few others. Or you can just deny your inner geek and get a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader instead. What I want to know is when are they going to get UFC Fatheads? Too bad we covered our walls in the TV room last year in new posters…I gots no room for a Fathead!

Flexible Software Licensing Plans

I want to give a shout-out to the people at ActiveWords, a product that I rely on every single day. I read about their licensing plan today:

“People who adopt ActiveWords want it available all the time, saving them time and making their computing more spontaneous, relevant, and enjoyable. We want to make sure our customers know they are free to take their ActiveWords with them, to use on any computer, anywhere, for the price of a single license. The ActiveWords PLUS Personal Version License gives our customers the unrestricted right to install and use the purchased version on any computer. As a customer you can unlock any ActiveWords PLUS installation for your exclusive use. This means you can use it on any computer, anywhere, anytime. This applies to the version of ActiveWords PLUS you purchase so long as it operates with a compatible Windows operating system.”

This is the way all software should work: it’s delusional how some companies think that every computer should have a unique license for their software, even if it’s the same person using it on each computer. Wouldn’t it be great if all companies were that flexible and friendly with their licensing? I’m far more inclined to purchase software that I know won’t give me a hassle when I install it on any or all of my five main PCs. Companies that treat me like a valued customer, instead of a software pirate, will always get my money first.

Now I just wish it wasn’t so confusing to unlock their software once you have the registration key…

The Value of Online Communities

The following is a quote from Sean O’Driscoll’s blog. Sean is the General Manager of Microsoft’s MVP program, of which I am a 10 year vetran (a third of my life…scary!). Since I run online communities for a living, community is something that’s always on my mind. Sometimes people have a hard time grasping what online communities are, how they come into being, and why for many companies they can create massive opportunities – but also many challenges. Sean’s take on community was particularly interesting as he used an example from his own life:

“One of my hobbies (obsessions according to my wife) is BBQing. I won’t get into the passions that surround debate on this subject here, but be assured they are as strong and deep as any topic I’ve ever seen. So, here’s the story – and yes, it is 100% true (these must be for it to work). A few years ago, my wife bought me a BBQ for Christmas, technically a smoker (www.cookshack.com). One of the first things I did was go online to register the product. I immediately discovered an online community hosted at the site. By the end of the day, I was reading post after post from a guy named “smokin’ okie.” I was lurking like crazy all the time (and slowly starting to post). As the months went by, I didn’t really give this a lot of thought relative to my day job on communities at Microsoft. But, one day it hit me. I was using this BBQ WAY more frequently than the average person uses a BBQ. I was buying accessories for it. I was recommending it to others (I can name 5 people I recommended it to who now own one). I was using it in non-standard ways – things you won’t read in the manual (by the way, this really builds loyalty as you’re not sure you could do it with a competitor.)

It also dawned on me that my motivations for being in that community were very diverse. I sought recipes, trouble shooting, tips and tricks, product recommendations, social connections, and on and on – I was really forming relationships. Since then, that cookshack has become a center piece of a full outdoor kitchen I had built to extend my addiction to bbqing. So, how did this relate to Microsoft for me? Well, let me tell you, software and computers are not a lot different than BBQing. What does every company want? They want you to use their products more. They want you to use a richer set of its features and capabilities. They want you to add onto it. They want you to recommend it and they want it to become a focal point in your life. It’s really the dream scenario – if communities could do that for me with BBQ, couldn’t we do the same with software – another topic with massive passions!! Now, don’t use BBQing (unless it’s true for you), but do figure out what your “bbq story” is. What you are trying to do is create a vivid story that helps others discover their own story – then you’ve got them.”

That’s what online communities are all about: people with a shared interest coming together to trade information about their passion.

Velocity Micro: Raised From the Dead

That’s right – technology miracles do happen! And, that’s right, I had a bizarre setup for that boot test. 😉 Acting on the suggestion of my contact at Velocity Micro, I took off that massive Zalman cooler and looked at the CPU – it was partially dislodged and some of the CPU pins were bent. I carefully bent the pins back (it’s microsurgery without the benefit of cameras or view magnification) and put the CPU back in, placing the Zalman cooler loosely on top. Much to my amazement, the damn thing booted up! It gave me a warning about a “degraded RAID configuration”, but thankfully it still booted into Windows Vista.

After finding some instructions on how to properly re-assemble the cooler on Zalman’s Web site, I put the computer back together and gave it a more proper setup. This machine will be used as a media center, so it will eventually end up in the corner of my office attached to my Dell 26″ LCD TV. Now that it’s actually up and running though – wow – it’s a screamer! Vista absolutely flies on this thing. Check out these Windows Experience Index scores:

This is the first Windows Vista computer I’ve seen where the CPU is the lowest part of the score. And when you consider that the CPU in question is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 5000+, running at 2.6 Ghz, the CPU is by no means “slow”. It’s the most powerful CPU I have at my disposal now. I’m not sure if it’s the 65 nanometre or 90 nanometre version – I suspect the 65nm, but I’m waiting on a confirmation of that from Velocity Micro. Continue reading Velocity Micro: Raised From the Dead

Dell Still Putting Craplets on Vista Computers

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That’s a screenshot of the toolbar on a brand new Vista Home Premium laptop that my mother-in-law ordered (an Insprion 6400 to be exact). Look at all that stuff! Many of them are Windows icons, but I resent the fact that Dell pre-loaded the machine with an entire suite of Google software. Vista already has an excellent built-in search function. Why pre-install Google Desktop Search and have two indexing engines running on the laptop at the same time? The Google toolbar was also installed, along with who knows what else. The typical Norton “free trial” was there as well, along with a couple of other icons that I don’t recognize. It took me about 90 minutes last night to wipe the drive, re-install Vista, and get all the drivers off the CD installed. Dell definitely makes this process as easy as they can, though I’d really prefer not to have to do it at all. Why not have a perfectly clean install of Vista then, upon first boot, give the customer the option to install the suggested programs? Leave the power of the decision in the hands of the person who paid for the product. Yeah, I know Dell operates on thin business margins and they make some money from the companies whose software is on the machine, but that’s no excuse.

Can you imagine buying a brand new car and having bumper stickers from Subway, Coke, Cialis, and Jenny Craig on the back of it? “Oh, we put bumper stickers on there to subsidise the cost of the car” says the salesman. “You can just scrape those off”. We’d never accept that from a car dealership, yet it’s exactly what we get from the major OEMs like Dell and HP. I’d happily pay an extra $10 to Dell just to get a machine that had no software installed on it beyond their basic Dell support applications.

Velocity Micro: Round 3 K.O.

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That’s the guts of the third PC that Velocity Micro has sent me. I plugged it in (after finding my own power cable, they forgot to send me back the main accessories box), turned it on,  and just like last time, it didn’t boot up. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I wasn’t. Based on the track record so far from Velocity Micro, I was actually expecting it not to work. This time I decided to trouble shoot it a bit more: last night I swapped out the video card (no change) and I ran a 50 foot power extension cable to another socket in my house, on the off chance that it was a power issue (highly unlikely, but I was getting desperate). That didn’t help either. This morning I received an email from my contact at Velocity Micro who suggested that it might be a partially un-seated CPU. I’ll disassemble the huge Zalman cooler and see if that helps…but at this point I’m very close to just cannibalizing this thing for parts and building a new machine from scratch.

Messenger Live: Where’s the Download Link?

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It’s funny how marketing people think sometimes: they’ll focus on all sorts of minute details, but when it comes down to the most important one, they forget it. Windows Live Messenger alerted me today that there was an update out – version 8.1. I declined to do an auto-update, so I clicked on the “More Info” link to (I thought) get taken to a page where I could download the setup program for 8.1 and install it at my leisure. I was taken to this site, a promotional area for Windows Live Messenger. I was expecting to see a “Download Now” link somewhere on there…nothing. I thought maybe it was a Firefox thing, so I loaded up the page in IE. Same thing. I clicked around to various pages and not one had a download. Lots of promotional material telling me how great the product is? Check. A download link so I could see for myself? Nada. I saw a feedback link, so I thought I could at least submit some input that a download link would be helpful. Clicking the link simply took me to the top of the page. Lame. I ended up having to manually edit the URL to get to a page with a download link. Doesn’t anybody check these things before they put it out for the whole world to see?

People Unclear on the Concept of Professional Networking Sites

Social networking sites such as MySpace have been perverted from their original purpose of connecting people – some of that still happens of course, but now it’s more of popularity contest where strangers add each other as “friends” in some bizarre game of one-upmanship. Everyone wants to have 100’s or 1000’s of “friends” even though they don’t actually know them. MySpace is a social tool, and I know people use it to meet other people, but I think the basic concept of what a “friends” list was supposed to mean has been stretched. But hey, it’s all for fun, so who cares. If people want to brag they have 500 “friends” on their list that they don’t actually know, so be it.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, is aimed at the professional business market – your network is supposed to be people that you actually know, people that you do business with in some fashion or know on a professional or personal basis. I don’t used LinkedIn all that much, but I’ve registered and have a group of people on my list that I actually know. I’ve seen something happening lately that I can only call the “MySpace Friends Phenominon” where people who simply know of me are asking to be added to my professional business network. Random people who read my Web sites think that’s an appropriate relationship for me to vouch for them by adding them to my LinkedIn network.

Who are these people? Why do they think they because they know my name I’d want to add them to my network? It’s not a matter of arrogance on my part – it’s a matter of professional ethics. If I’m going to have someone in my network of known professional associates, it’s going to be because I know who they are and what they do. I’m a big believer in personal integrity, and if I don’t know the person at least on some basic level (I’ve exchanged a few email messages with them for instance) I’m not going to say that I “know” them.

You Know It’s Cold When…

I don’t want to turn this blog into one of those “Hey, check out this funny video!” blogs, but this video was just too crazy not to share – it’s not actually “frozen waves”, but it’s frozen snow and ice being pushed up by waves, and it looks unlike anything else I’ve ever seen.

Frozen Waves in Newfoundland

Frozen waves crush against the shore in this brutally cold clip from Newfoundland.