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Customer Service in action

So, after trashing my last pair of cheap primark shades, yes I know but for £2 each, a tenners worth lasted me nearly a year.

So I decide last night to get some new pairs.

I quite fancy some flashy new prada ones, but at £170 a pop, and with my record for leaving them places or breaking them, that's a no no

I end up at www.replica-sunglasses.co.uk

Don't go there yet, let me set the scene.

It's 11:30, I just want to order some shades and go to bed.

I goto the site...BLARING MUSIC..

Ah like wtf! where's the mute button.

Q:Now what moron designs a site with no mute button?
A: http://www.dreamshock.com/ apparently, now they might have been told not to by their customer, but frankly I can't see it really.

Perhaps someone from dreamshock can comment?

Now, go have a look, find the mute button?

that's right, you're not missing it, it's not there.

So I drop the guy a line.

What's the with blaring music?

I get a reply.

Jason- Eye Dezigns - jason@replica-sunglasses.co.uk

Thank you for your comments,we have over 500 individual customers per day and your the first to give those comments,the fact that you find them annoying is of no concern ,and the fact that you wright a email at 11.35pm to tell us shows us that you have nothing better to do with your time .




So not a, wow, we hadn't noticed, thanks for pointing this out, a big, you're a customer, we have some of those bogg off.


and yes, whoever it is, can't manage to spell write...

So, I politely pointed out, I'm sure the digg crowd would enjoy this, it's given me some laughs, and I'm sure everyone will want to know what to expect from customer services there....

Phones phones phones...Iphone N95 N95 8GB K850i Why can't I find a phone... N95 8GB vs N95 vs K8050i vs Iphone vs G600 Isync

Why oh why Can't I find the perfect phone?

I mean apple are pretty good at Stuff, Nokia have been doing it for a while, and  even  Sony Ericsson have made some good phones..T61 anyone?

So what do I want out of a phone.

Works with a Mac and Windows. I use a Mac for home, corporate culture dictates Windows.
Great battery life. There is no point having the greatest phone in the world if it lasts five minutes.
Good Camera. Note not a great camera. I've got several good cameras from Canon and Sony that whilst a few years old, still whoop all the camera phones out there.

however again it's no good having the greatest camera in the world, and being the best photographer in the world, and witnessing Kylie Minogue being abducted by Aliens if the camera is in a bag sitting at home.

So what are the contenders and how do they stack up.

Apple Iphone
Nokia N95
Nokia N95 8GB
Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G600
LG Viewty. LG KU990

Ok lets get the easy ones out the Way.

Samsung LG.

How difficult is it to build an Isync profile for your phones? Even if you just shared the details out, lots of people can make them.

You don't support the OS I use..I'm not buying your phones and will tell others not too and why.

Nokia N95.

Too short battery life.

You can kill it with phone calls alone in two hours.
If you turn everything on, 60 minutes.
For a £500 phone released in 2007.
Nope.

K850i.

I've got a K800i. It's a great phone. 3.2 M camera, great battery life hunch back...

So the K810i improved on that, better battery, sleaker, better buttons.

So my expectation was, K850i, K810i with 5MP Camera. Superb. A phone camera, rather than a camera phone. Which was exactly what I was looking for after the disappointment of the flash in the pan N95.

How wrong was I.

Sony Ericsson have taken a wondeful phone and fiddled with it. The UI is broken hard to use, and easy to misue. On the UK vodafone one, every time I pick up the phone it brings up contacts or vodfone live.

Can i get it to auto lock? Perhaps, I can't seem to find out how.
Can i get the camera to automically select best shot each time..nope. It always goes back to it's default and that's it.

I decided to upgrade the firmware, and now found that the 34 music files and the 30 or so photos I had on the memory card now overwhelmed the phone and it could not see them as I get an indexing of files failed due to lack of memory which is the same as a lot of people on the new firmware out a couple of weeks now. Plus I have to pay for an Isync client, and I can't easily get the photos off the phone or music on it. Thanks Sony.

So finally, which to knock off it's perch next?

N95 8GB or Iphone...

Lets go with the unexpected, lets do the Iphone.

Btw, if you're expecting a happy ending to this post then look away now.

Iphone.

Great phone.
Now why only a 2MP Camera? I mean 2MP? That's so 3 years ago and don't give me the memory life or battery issue, running a higher density ccd shouldn't affect either drastically.

But what lets the Iphone down most is..

Nope not 3G.
Nope not EDGE.

MMS and SMS.

This is where the Iphone shows apple to be a computer company not a phone company.

If you send me an SMS with a Telephone number in it, you know what I'm likely to want to do with that number...yup call it.

Apple don't think so.

How about forward it..wrong again.

Edit it? Wrong again.

Plus no MMS, which hey they might fix.

So finally onto the N95 8GB.

So they've fixed the dodgy wobbly buttons.
They've fixed the screen, it's even bigger.
They've mostly fixed the battery issues now, being relatively careful, you can easily eke it out to one day now.

But in their infinite wisdom, they've taken the shutter off the camera.

So wether it be the 640x480 camera in my first camera phone, or a 5 megapixel camera phone photo from an N95, they call look bad with finger marks on the lens or a big scratch on it.

Gah.

Roll on the Iphone 3g 16GB SMS/MMS special, or the N95 16GB with lens cover and bigger battery. Phone are getting there...just not quite yet.

Blogged with Flock

Men and Women are equal?

Not mine, probably not orignal, but definately amusing..


As everyone who is old enough to be in college should know, women have one a very strange power over men. No matter what people say, women are better able to control their sex drives and they use this power over men for all sorts of reasons.

The following is a fun story by chief at Ofuzi I read a few months back about a guy with a funny analogy about this sort of thing. Just read it:

One evening last week, my girlfriend and I were getting into
bed.

Well, the passion starts to heat up, and she eventually says “I don’t feel
like it, I just want you to hold me.”

I said “WHAT??!! What was that?!”

So she says the words that every boyfriend on the planet dreads to hear…

“You’re just not in touch with my emotional needs as a woman enough for me
to satisfy your physical needs as a man.” She responded to my puzzled look
by saying, “Can’t you just love me for who I am and not what I do for you in
the bedroom?”

Realizing that nothing was going to happen that night, I went to sleep.

The very next day I opted to take the day off of work to spend time with
her. We went out to a nice lunch and then went shopping at a big, big
unnamed department store. I walked around with her while she tried on
several different very expensive outfits. She couldn’t decide which one to
take so I told her we’d just buy them all. She wanted new shoes to
compliment her new clothes, so I said lets get a pair for each outfit. We
went onto the jewelry department where she picked out a pair of diamond
earrings. Let me tell you…she was so excited. She must have thought I was
one wave short of a shipwreck. I started to think she was testing me because
she asked for a tennis bracelet when she doesn’t even know how to play
tennis. I think I threw her for a loop when I said, “That’s fine, honey.”
She was almost nearing sexual satisfaction from all of the excitement.
Smiling with excited anticipation she finally said, “I think this is all
dear, let’s go to the cashier.”

I could hardly contain myself when I blurted out, “No honey, I don’t feel
like it.”

Her face just went completely blank as her jaw dropped with a baffled
WHAT?”

I then said “honey! I just want you to HOLD this stuff for a while. You’re
just not in touch with my financial needs as a man enough for me to satisfy
your shopping needs as a woman.” And just when she had this look like she
was going to kill me, I added, “Why can’t you just love me for who I am and
not for the things I buy you?”

Apparently I’m not having sex tonight either.

Install Vista now...

You know this pictures just going to make you want to upgrade to Vista right away...

Also, I don't know what's scarier..that I know every single one of these OS's...hell I've owned boxes that ran all of these OS's

or the fact that I can spot that one is missing..I'd hate to think what Freebsd is going to be....

hiiammac.jpg (JPEG Image, 3600x600 pixels)

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Apple vs Nokia...

Nokia's iPhone -- no, seriously - Engadget

So would you buy the Iphone from apple the creator, or from Nokia, the phone company that's copying...

Well depends on which ones available first in the UK really, oh and with HSDPA as well...no super 3g, not buying it...

technorati tags:nokia, iphone, copy, hsdpa, 3g, super-3g

Blogged with Flock

Virgin Media chief Burch resigns

Virgin Media chief Burch resigns:
Virgin Media chief executive Steve Burch quits with immediate effect, the cable broadcaster says.

Personal reasons? could it be he didn't want to get fired perhaps? Now I'm not saying that's the case, but the merger didn't go so well did it now, they seem to have managed to get the worst of both NTL and Telewest, and the poorly chosen fight with Sky is losing them money.

Just why they signed up Sky for Living with CSI, Criminal Minds etc and didn't get Sky1 and the reciprocally amazes me. Yes I'm sure SKY would have wanted more money for Sky 1 than Living and Bravo and the other channels, but perhaps I could understand this more if Sky customers were without the Virgin channels as well as the Virgin customers being without the Sky ones....

Michael Bay responds to Paramount's abandonment of Blu-ray No Transformer 2

Michael Bay responds to Paramount's abandonment of Blu-ray No Transformer 2:
Michael Bay -- the director behind "Transformers,""Bad Boys,""Pear Harbor," etc. -- just threw down with Paramount in his personal blog. He states, "I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks! They were progressive by having two formats. No Transformers 2 for me!"

Except he didn't, it was a comment in the forums

(now broken with a 503 due to being dugg)

If you want to see the forum post, look here..

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/7138/michaelbluraybayal6.jpg

OSX P990 P99i isync problem solved, who needs the iphone?

So whilst mulling over the fact that if the P990i would only do isync properly, and that the Iphone wasn't going to cut it unless it had 3g in Europe, I decided to take on Sony Ericcson. I mean these are the guys that said it would work when the phone was released. When Vodafone sold me the phone, they said it work, because hey, Sony Ericsson said it would work.

Well when I first contacted Sony Erissson, they weren't too enthusiastic about it, indeed it wasn't until I pointed out that their white paper on the subject still listed it as going to work, did they show any interest, but I got a we're not really doing anything about this, as it's an old phone and we've moved on.

However, when I pointed out to Vodafone, that I could legitimately return the phone as it was not fit for purpose, they asked Sony Ericsson to open the case.

That was 3 months ago, after a bit of poking at them, I get this in the mail today.

Tested it, my wife who's a driving Instructor Surrey Downs Driving Academy - blatent plug
http://www.sdda.co.uk/sub/contactus.html to get in touch if you need a great driving instructor in Surrey (UK Surrey that is) is finally going to stop bugging my about getting her phone working with her Mac!

Yay.

for everyone else, here's the link.

Enjoy.

Thank you for contacting the Sony Ericsson Call Centre.

With regards to your enquiry, please find below the plugin required to get your P990i connected to Apple iSync via bluetooth:

http://www.sonyericsson.com/downloads/SonyEricsson%20P990i%20iSync%20Plugin%20Version%201.07.zip


Please note this is not the P1 hack that was about a while ago, this is the real deal from SE themselves.

Ian

Nooo No more ACR systems I want a person!

Nice, ever wanted to talk to a real person because none of the 64,00,000 options you're presented with when trying to press 1 for this and 3 for this match up?

Try this then, great site.

read more | digg story

Going going free...

Interesting, is it going to be free? Find out.

http://maczot.com/

Sex in videogames: It's time to grow up

At a time when we're told by the industry that the average gamers are pushing 30 rather than 13 how is it that a pair of bare naked breasts and the thought of hardcore sex got more people riled up about Grand Theft Auto than the fact that is one of the most reprehensively violent games out there?


Except...

The article so nearly gets it, then veers away like a 4 year old playing hot or cold.

Why does the writed feel concern over sex, that he doesn't over violence?

Why does this attitude, predominantly come from the US?

As the author points out, he'd rather his children make love than war, but only in the real world?

We'd all rather little johnny was into condoms than guns, and if you look at a really hard real world example, think of the women in your life you love the most. Now pick, rape or murder?

Now I'm not saying that sex in games always equates to rape, but rape is a lot less permanent than murder, which is very very final.

So the question that's not answered is probably the hardest and more difficult one.

If you had two rooms, one showing hardcore porn, and one with the scene in robocop where the guys gets slowly blown apart with a shot-gun.

Which one do you think American Mum's would complain about if their 16 year old saw it?

Given that they're legally able to do one, and would face death-row if they did the other, I think it makes for a stage juxtaposition that I think most of the mums wouldn't blink an eye at the scene in robocop.

I'm also not saying this is a USA only phenomenon, but seems to be strongest there.



read more | digg story

It's a calendar

Why's it so difficult?

www.airset.com nearly have it, www.30boxes.com looks good, www.xcnetwork.com seem to have it but at $125 a pop can keep it.

What am I raving about, keeping calendars in sync.

I use Ical at home, Outlook at work, why's it so difficult to keep them in sync, and even better, allow people I want to see where I am when I want to?

Expenses

Thought for the day.

Expenses Suck. We all know they do, why can't we have a daily
allowance per dium like the rest of Europe Does?

Do you know what sucks more than expenses? Japanese expenses, so now I
have a bunch of receipts, where I can't even tell wether I've just put
through deoderant as breakfast, or a bottle of sake as lunch.

And finally, what's worse than Japanese expenses?

No, you didn't guess it, Japanese expenses with no date on them, yup,
just a what and when.

It's enough to drive a man into his Sake cup...

Oh man, they're too big

I saw this and loved it, shame my two are too big for it now though.

If only you could send it back

It makes you wish that the reply to address in that spam would be
real.....just for once.

How stupid can they be?

From the register.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/25/uk_war_driver_fined/

So if you fire up your laptop, and it connects to a hotspot you could be fined £500.

So how do you tell if it's starbucks you've connected to, or the flat above, or across the street.

Answer, you can't. Plus reading a little further, Communications Act 2003 means that due to this ruling, a wireless card is a method for stealing access. Do apple and cisco know? I hope so.

Mad I tell you, mad.

Some more thoughts on it here. http://securityawareness.blogspot.com/2005/08/stealing-your-neighbors-net.html#comments

Start of a Blog

So this is how it starts, blogging.

I'll try to do a mix of thoughts for the day, and technical bits.