XCode seems preternaturally sensitive to hidden control characters so tonight I’m going to have to retype all of the code in my project all over again. I checked it line by line and every { was followed by a corresponding }.

Frustrating but part of the learning process I reckon.

“Just a word of caution: I set up my email address for sending and receiving .me emails. When I had finished and found that it was not working properly, I erased the .me account and kept the .mac account. Bad move! All my .mac email evaporated!”

Here’s something to remember. Your .Mac and your me.com addresses are exactly the same account. Just the name changes. If you delete the mail in one, it depletes the other. It’s the same. Your mail does not evaporate. You deleted it.

This is why humans and computers should be kept separate.

[UPDATE: Finger is indeed broken but partially healed. Problem is due to tendon coming loose. Felt a bit sick. Finger splinted and will take 6 weeks to heal]

Apparently having the sort code and account number and transferring funds is not as straightforward as you’d expect and the systems the banks use don’t have the verification checking to let you know that the payment can’t be accepted. Wouldn’t it make more sense to do that verification check at data entry time? And more to the point - why the hell can’t I transfer money that way? The banks have unique numbers, the accounts have unique numbers within the banks - what’s the problem?

We’re a far cry from the digital future we dream of where commerce can flow unfettered. Even transferring money from my own bank account to another online is made more difficult if the second is in a different country. The quick solution, we’re told, is to post a cheque.

Yes, it has to be some sort of cruel joke.

Spiceworks combines everything you need to manage IT in one easy-to-use application:

• Software inventory, network inventory, PC inventory. Inventory every IT thing you manage.
• Network monitoring, Exchange monitoring, license monitoring and more. Stay alert!
• Asset reporting, inventory reporting… share a report. Report to your heart’s content!
• Helpdesk & IT Portal. Let ‘em submit a ticket! Now you can track every IT task and project.

Looks great. Windows only. Shame.

It’ll just require a bit more preparation.

A tale of woe in dealing with the carrier network providers and their stores.

This note goes out to all service providers, not just Three. What makes you think the Sale of Goods Act doesn’t apply to you? Under what circumstance is a three month old phone refusing to make calls fit for purpose? And if your customer is willing to accept a repair, what makes you think that depriving him of service for five days is a good move? How hard is it to provide a loan handset? What other piece of consumer electronics would I not get a replacement for if it failed after three months?

So, no joy at all. I leave the Three shop a very unhappy camper. At this point, I’m seething, and prepared to cancel my contract and go with someone else. I walk past CPW and into the Vodafone store. Astonishingly, they don’t seem to want my business. Some free advice for Vodafone retail employee trainers: smugness is not an attractive quality in in-store staff.

This isn’t just limited to Three or Vodafone. In fact, it seems to be a job requirement to be an insufferable prick. Which is why it’s so refreshing to find people who are nice, enthused and generally helpful (Colin and Christina from O2 in Ards, Shona and ‘Trainee’ from O2 on Main street, Bangor).

My experiences with Three and Orange have been less than stellar when asking about their 3G USB dongles. They just have no clue. I have come in just waiting to be sold something. Tell me why your product is better than the competition - don’t just pick up a datasheet and start reading because, you know what, I already read it. And the Wikipedia pages on your coverage which I’ve already checked out for my area. Know your product for God’s sake.

That’s why my visit to O2 in Bangor was pretty good. The two people there were enthused about their phones, had recent phones on them and took the time to demo cool features. They also didn’t lie to me when I asked questions about them or try to gloss over things. We did speed tests on the applications, especially the browser which helped me help my partner make educated decisions about future handsets.

For all the problems with Vista, Microsoft’s profits and revenues are just fine.

regarding the comments in The New York Times.

Bill Veghte, a Microsoft senior vice president, sent a letter to customers reassuring them there would be minimal changes to Windows’ essential code. “Our approach with Windows 7,” he wrote, “is to build off the same core architecture as Windows Vista so the investments you and our partners have made in Windows Vista will continue to pay off with Windows 7.”

This is the issue here. Without serious re-education on what computers should do, most people will be happy to use XP for the next decade and only go to Vista or Windows 7 when they need to get a new machine (because the old one has gotten to the point that it’s slow and clogged up with malware) as it’s cheaper for a home user to buy a new computer than to get it cleaned ‘professionally’.

How did we get here? Would anyone have thought, at the dawn of the digital age, we’d be hamstrung like we are now? On the other hand, we had the promise of flying cars and silver suits.

While describing Apple as a “great company”, Mr Seidenberg highlights its small market share of global handset sales.

Yeah, there are a hundred small PC manufacturers who went out of business when the bottom fell out of the PC market and everyone said Apple should go after the low end market. Well, guess what, Apple didn’t and Apple did okay in the high end. Previous figures dictate that the smartphone market is about 100 million handsets in 2008. And Apple, in just over a year will have captured 10% of the market. If you ignore that, the premium market, then you’re blind to what drives the market forward.

“There goes the conspiracy again,” he says of Apple. “You’re declaring them a winner before they’ve earned it on the field.”

Actually, Seidenberg is reinforcing Apple’s position by claiming there is a conspiracy. Because that would be stupid. Yes, let’s blame Apple’s success on a conspiracy because it couldn’t be because they were ….delivering what people wanted?

As handsets become banking tools and games controllers, he argues, mobile operators can up-end other companies’ business models. “It’s very cool. And Steve Jobs eventually will get old . . .  I like our chances.”

That’s your tactic? Wait til he gets old and retires? Are you kidding? That’s the Verizon strategy. Is that going to work with every competitor? You’re just going to wait til their star staff get old????

That has to be the most stupid strategy I’ve ever heard. Good luck with it, dumbass.

Both of these stores were likely O2 franchises and not necessarily O2 corporate or O2 retail. So I rang O2’s specialist iPhone support line.
I was told:

• I would have to wait til the end of my existing contract (October) to get an iPhone 3G. She was quite pushy and talked over me as I tried to explain that she was contradicting the web site.
• When I’d endured a couple of minutes on hold while she read the web site, she confirmed that O2 would ‘give me a bell’ sometime in late July and tell me what the process would be.
• She then suggested I call 2302 from my handset to get more information. I explained quietly that I’d called 2302 and had been directed to her. I just gave up then. Said goodbye in a nice way.
• When she said goodbye she was late in putting the phone down where I heard someone say “Are they going to call them?” to which she says “Says so on the web site.”

Overwhelmed I am not. It’s evident that the people on the front lines don’t have a clue - they’ve been kept completely in the dark. This is something that annoys me about big companies. After 12 years of doing tech support, I think it’s absolutely vital to inform the people on the helpdesks of the situation as soon as you know. It stops them from getting frustrated and then in turn, frustrating your customers. Remember that for any company, your customers are your most important asset. (Apple, of course, breaks the mould here because their customers enjoy speculating about new Apple products more than they actually like buying them.)

I understand it’s two weeks now until the iPhone release and if rumours on the Internet are to believed, the new firmware for the iPhone may have just hit final release which means Apple will be working hard to get it in place for download to phones by the 11th July.

O2 will be doing well out of me. We have two iPhones in this household and both will be upgrading to iPhone 3G and handing the old phones to family members to use - effectively doubling O2’s penetration. This is not to be ignored. The early adopters will also be the most effective marketing platform for O2.

I’m left a little frustrated about being an early adopter and not having any answers. About being told the opposite of what I’d read on the web site. About the company’s apparent interest in new customers rather than existing customers.