Category: product complaints

Facebook sucks …

On By Rick McIn Google, photos, product complaints, product endorsements1 Comment

If you are not using Facebook already, you probably will be soon. Your “friends” will insist.

It’s by far the best general social networking site and looks great compared with MySpace.

Yet once the novelty wears off and you actually want to use Facebook as an alternative to email, it blows.

Of the many Facebook Sucks posts I’ve read, this is the most succinct in laying out changes needed instantly!

• Changing the meaningless word of “Friend”
• removing the “is” in the status
• creating a fitler of people who are your real friends and provide a feed for that
• enabling a true photo management system like on Flickr. Same thing on video
• Stopping referring me to facebook to read messages and actually sending me my messages
• Letting me remove this confirmation panel each time i add someone as a friend
• letting me add/remove multiple people as friend
• providing knowledge paths between friends (like on linkedin)
• providing true people search
• providing unique URLs for anything
• providing a correct group management and alert system (new members, messages,..)

MYBLOG by Ouriel: What is Facebook waiting for…?

The ones in bold are particular pet peeves of mine.

There’s no way I can use the photo system in Facebook because it is so inferior to Flickr.

And Facebook had better hurry. The GOOGLE is coming to this party soon. (and I don’t mean crappy Orkut.) Many will be tempted to jump to “GoogleBook”.

I suspect Google did not buy Facebook because it is too gummed up in design. Better to start from scratch with a competitor that works far better.

facebooksucks.jpg

Facebook – join now

Can GAMING Learn from music?

On By Rick McIn music, product complaintsLeave a comment

Perhaps freeing the music is just the beginning.

Radiohead’s move to offer its latest album, “In Rainbows,” as a direct download — for a price set by the consumer — is a first among high-profile bands. It’s also a watershed moment in the music business, and one the game industry would be foolish not to pay attention to. The lesson is simple, really: Create a fair and consumer-friendly way to free the media.

Consumers Want Freedom

Consumers now want the freedom to use their media as they wish. When it comes to music, they want to listen to songs in their cars, on their PCs and on their living room stereos. They want to create mixes and playlists and share them with friends; to rip apart songs and create mashups. They want to customize their experience of music.

Part of the push is a backlash against harsh DRM technology. …

In gaming, region encoding is perhaps the worst offender — the consumer doesn’t want to have to buy a Japanese PlayStation just to play Japanese import games. Don’t make her do that.

Creators Want Control

The other side of the equation are the artists who, like Radiohead, have become fed up with having to funnel their product through the Byzantine process of publishing on a label, only to get, more often than not, royally screwed. Why would any artist choose to sign away their creativity like that? Because until recently, there was little choice. But then came the wave of independent labels and the rise of the indies, and concurrently (not coincidentally) the explosion of the digital download. Now artists can choose not to sign, even if they don’t have the draw of Radiohead. Independent musician Jonathan Coulton, for example, has been quietly building his one-man music business for two years.

…

What Can Games Learn from Music’s Mistakes? « GigaOM

I’m not a gamer so regional encoding does not affect me.

But I have legal DVDs right now from New Zealand. And I have trouble playing them because of some copy protection scheme.

Lets get rid of that too. PLEASE.

The producer of those DVDs is stymied, by the way, under our current economic model. He cannot get distribution.

not even TreeHugger will drink this Cool Aid

On By Rick McIn health & fitness, product complaintsLeave a comment

Organic Water ?!

safeway-organic-water-jj-002.jpg

Organic. Bottled. Water. Because nothing says regular tap water like “antibiotics, growth hormones, synthetic pesticides and genetic modification.” Right?

Are You Kidding Us, Safeway? (TreeHugger)

Akismet stops SPAM

On By Rick McIn internet, product complaints, product endorsementsLeave a comment

92% of all comments on blogs are spam. Yet you’ve never seen a spam comment on this blog.

I use a free for personal use spam blocker called Akismet:

… Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.

akismet.jpg
screenshot

Stop Comment Spam and Trackback Spam « Akismet

Who doesn’t my email spam blocker work properly?

Super Corn Me – the movie

On By Rick McIn bad news, food, product complaints, product endorsementsLeave a comment

I posted my distaste for the corn industry after hearing about the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

Corn is killing us.

Now in Super Size Me tradition is this movie:

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

(via Treehugger – Opening Today in Theaters: King Corn )

bloggers as celebrities in Virgin Airlines ad

On By Rick McIn internet, product complaints, travelLeave a comment

Finally.

A corporate behemoth smart enough to hook into the blogosphere.

… actual bloggers appearing in the ad are Xeni Jardin, Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, and Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing and Pete Rojas of Engadget. I hope they’re getting a bunch of money for it. Or at least free tickets.

bloggers.gif

Emerging From The Hall Of Justice? – Leo Laporte

You’d think I’d be excited about Virgin Airlines expanding in America.

But I was quite disappointed with Virgin, Australia when I took 8 flights with them earlier this year. I will stay away from that airline if I can.

I joined Orkut – Google’s Facebook

On By Rick McIn Google, internet, product complaintsLeave a comment

With Google’s stock price at a record high, it’s hard to claim they’ve bungled anything.

But if GOOG is vulnerable anywhere, it’s lack of social networking.

They realize this. And likely will social network EVERYTHING in the Googleverse.

In the meantime, their version of Facebook is only big in Asia and Latin America.

Actually, it’s pretty good. it’s got too much SPAM. Very Despite looking similar to Facebook, which has very little SPAM.

The big question … DO YOU TRUST GOOGLE with your information?

Orkut’s terms of service state:

… By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials.

Orkut – Wikipedia

I joined mainly to check the hiking and gymnastics groups.

orkut.jpg

Since I have no friends on Orkut, I will look at it rarely.

read more … Google’s Orkut: A World of Ambition – Business Week

UPDATE – Orkut is pretty crappy from what I can see after 20min. Lots of SPAM (example below). I went to report this “violation”. Let’s see how long it takes Google to remove this post and fake user.

spam.jpg
SPAM post

iClone

On By Rick McIn Apple, product complaintsLeave a comment

Here is another iPhone clone from China, the CECT P168.

iclone.jpg

The CECT P168 looks really like the iPhone, even the wallpaper has been copied. The CECT P168 has a 3.5-inch QVGA LCD touchscreen, a 2 Megapixel camera (actual resolution: 1.3 Megapixel). It has integrated music player, video player, dictionary.

CECT P168 – iPhone Clone – iTech News Net | Latest Tech News, Gadget News and more…

The Meizu miniOne, too, is supposed to be available in China sometime soon:

iclone_485.jpg

Popular Science Magazine – China’s iClone

Unlike most technology companies, I suspect Apple does not spend much time worrying about cloners. Apple is so far ahead, and innovates so quickly, that trying to clone the latest, greatest Apple hot product is not as profitable as churning out another copy of Microsoft Office.

domain registry of Canada – CROOKS

On By Rick McIn internet, product complaintsLeave a comment

WARNING

Though I complained to the Competition Bureau of Canada in April, a company called “Domain Registry of Canada” with a mailing address in Markham, Ontario continues what I consider to be a mail SCAM.

They send people who own domain names (RickMcCharles.com, for example) a “Domain Name Expiration Notice” that looks like a renewal invoice.

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DROC.ca

I have a copy of their letter scam if you want to see it.