Observer: Child workers, some as young as 10, have been found working in a textile factory in conditions close to slavery to produce clothes that appear destined for Gap Kids, one of the most successful arms of the high street giant.
Gap is taking the situation “very seriously” apparently, although obviously not seriously enough to investigate where their products are coming from before this kind of shit happens.
The New York Times doesn’t just have a blog about open source, it’s open-sourced some of it’s own tools. On Trac. How cool is that?
Open: A blog about open source technology at The New York Times, written by and primarily for developers. This includes our own projects, our work with open-source technologies at nytimes.com, and other interesting topics in the open source and Web 2.0 worlds.
DBSlayer looks shit-hot btw. I’ll be keeping that in mind for an upcoming project.
I’ve been discussing BOL – as covered in this post – with a customer service rep from BOI, but I don’t think that’s going to result in any changes, so I asked them to forward this to the Chief Executive, or tell me how to get it to them. This probably won’t result in any changes either, but it’s worth a shot. If you think BOL is a steaming pile of shite too, perhaps you should put pen to paper yourself.
Dear [Pinstripe-Suited Person],
Someone in BOI needs to talk to someone that understands the Internet, because it’s clear that the bank has no idea how things work outside the branch network. A lead time of more than a year – never mind several years – for the development of a web application is simply ridiculous, even with the extra security contraints the bank requires.
This is on top of the blatant ignorance the bank displays with regard to web standards and usability. The fact that I can’t log into the current BOL system with any browser I choose, never mind any operating system I choose, is an absolute disgrace in a time when market share for the recommended browser and OS are shrinking fast. The fact that the system appears to have been designed by a child doesn’t help matters either.
Tha bank needs to get it’s house in order on this matter. It may not like the Internet and there are obvious and valid reasons for this, but it’s not going to go away. Continuing to deny it with the pigheadedness of the record labels is going hurt in the long run.
Regards,
Adam Beecher
Bank of Ireland continues to befuddle me as a company. In some areas they absolutely excel, but in others they’re the worst of the worst. In meatspace I’ve dealt with their branch staff quite a bit in recent years because of several long-winded account changes, and apart from a few – inevitable – errors, they’ve been a pleasure to deal with. Friendly, helpful and competent, their staff run with problems until they’re fixed, taking responsibility and apologising for issues that pop up along the way. On the face-face-face front, companies could learn a lot from BOI.
Step outside the branch network though, and it can be very slapdash, particularly when technology is involved. The IVR systems are long-winded and circuitous, the websites are ugly and befuddling, and having watched people run through their own internal forms on my behalf, I can only imagine how much time is wasted going forward and back in their systems trying to get things done. Their Business OnLine system, though, should be used by experts in usability and design on how not to design a web app.
If you use BOL, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, visit it and take a look, but please, don’t click on anything yet if you run anything bar Windows and IE, as you could actually break something. And in a brilliant way, as will become apparent. When you arrive on the site, a little window will pop up telling you that “Business On Line [is] Loading”, and that you should “Please wait”. While you’re waiting – it’ll be a while, because it will load for a period of ∞ seconds – have a look around at the design and layout.
Quite apart from the fact that they’re generally just awful, you’ll notice that it wasn’t just the application developers that didn’t understand cross-platform and cross-browser development, the designers don’t either; check out the lovely rounded corners in Firefox, for example. The layout is atrocious too of course, with links scattered about the page seemingly at random. Still “loading”? You may have noticed the “PC Compatibility” link while waiting, and been tempted to click it, but don’t if you’re running Firefox please, because it’ll crash. Yes, the “PC Compatibility” page will crash your browser.
If you actually are running Windows and Internet Explorer you’re probably ok, but make sure you install Java first. No, not Sun Java or any other commonly available Java VM, they won’t work; you need the Microsoft JVM. The one that isn’t available any more. BOI will give it to you when you’re trained on their system, but getting it after a reinstall can be a bit tricky if you’re in a rush, you’ll need to google for “msjavx86.exe” and install it yourself. Don’t forget to update afterwards while you’re at it, as that version isn’t secure, and you can’t install the update without installing that. Efficient, eh?
If you’re a user of BOL you may have been told that a new version is on the way, like I was a year or two ago when I first started using it, but I’m afraid that was either a lie or bullshit, because there’s no end in sight. In a week when they’ve upgraded their consumer-level online banking system to something approaching a decent web app – but still not even close to a good one – a customer care rep has confirmed to me that the timeframe for rollout of a BOL upgrade is being calculated in years. And not just a couple of years either:
“at the early stages of this project we may have been given an unofficial timeframe of one maybe two years but now the project has enlarged and has turned into a large scale project incorporating a number different sections. It has grown enormously since the very initial stages of scoping the project and they are not in the position as of yet to issue us with timeframes for the completion of the project”
Let’s be clear on something here folks: this is a web app. Myself and two colleagues are talking about building a web app project at the moment, and the longest part of our lead time is 3 months, while we wait for one to come back to Ireland. When he does, we’ll spend a month on the near side hashing it out, a month firing it together, and a month on the far side on cleanup and pitches, for a total of 6 months. If it were a web app for a bank, we might spend another six months security consultations and code reviews, maybe even a full year. But 2 years plus, when it was obvious 2 years ago it was shite? Fuck off.
Valleywag: “My friend got a call from her friend at Facebook, asking why she kept looking at his profile,” says a privacy-conscious source at a major tech company. Turns out Facebook employees can (and do) check out anyone’s profile. Not only that, but they also see which profiles a user has viewed — a major privacy violation. If you’ve been obsessed with a workmate or classmate, Facebook employees know. If Barack Obama’s intern has been using the campaign account to troll for hotties, Facebook employees know. Within the company, it’s considered a job perk, and employees check this data for fun.
Damien recently said “hah” on my “Wall” on Facebook. He didn’t see fit to reply when I asked what he meant – although it’s possible it has the same retarded design as Bebo’s – but at a guess I’d say he was poking fun at the fact that I’m actually on Facebook, given my larting of it in several locations. In actual fact I’ve been a member since it opened, just like I’m a member of Bebo, MySpace, and most other “Web 2.0” sites. I’m an Internet consultant, it’s my job to keep an eye on these things; plus, when your biggest clients add you to their networks, it’s generally not a good idea to tell them to fuck off.
It doesn’t stop me hating them, and their disdain for privacy. I’ve read several posts recently saying that Facebook is going to become the de facto social networking site across the board, not just for the social networking addicts, but for professionals too. And they may be right, and Facebook certainly seems to be trying to accomodate them; but that doesn’t mean that they have the best platform, or more importantly, the best practices and policies. It means they have the most sheep.
I don’t want to be a member of Facebook. I’ll stay a member because it may be good for business in the long run, but I won’t visit it unless I have to. I’d much prefer to spend my time – and money, if necessary – on something like LinkedIn. It has problems too, but it’s just better put together and better thought out. That’s where business people should be, not bleating at each other like idiots and getting nothing done on Facebook.
Does anybody in the music industry get it? I hear stories about artists that get it, but I’ve yet to actually meet one. Take Flick here, whose basic premise is:
“As consumers, we seem to feel entitled to have full access to music, and we wince at the thought of paying for it.”
To which one of his commentors responded:
“I like how you just pull numbers straight out of your motherfucking ass. For example, “Someone that received the promotional copy decided to place the album on a Torrent site. Now anyone can download your album for free and you won’t see a single penny.†That’s just bullshit and if you’re too mired in the glory days of ripping off the consumer, then you’re obviously on your way out.”
The emphasis above is mine. Of course Spencer there is a retard for putting it like a petulant child, but he picked up on the exact same sentence I did; a frankly stupid comment in an otherwise reasonable post. (Apart from that contract Flick signed of course; I mean, Jesus! :) (more…)
This is how I want to run my business. I try to do a lot of these already, but obviously scale applies to others. Scale is coming to us, I think. The fact that it’s ‘us’ now, and not just me, is a start. :)
Tucows Blog: Mid-morning brought an inspirational business session titled Choosing to be Great Instead of Big, led by Layne Sisk, president of The Plus Group. His talk was about focusing your efforts on satisfying key groups of people rather than appealing to mass audiences. Layne used five ways to be “great†to illustrate his point:
- Great in your customers eyes
- Not just in customer service, be great from their perspective
- Make the relationship personal
- Make your customers a branch of your marketing department
- Great in quality
- If you don’t believe in quality, you’ll never produce it
- Get customer feedback to gauge quality levels
- Great in community
- Participate in/set up community involvement programs
- Get involved in what you truly care about
- Great place to work
- Promote a culture of intimacy
- Make pay a secondary reason for people to work for you
- Great for you
- Make your business something you love; it becomes like your second family
That’s what Ian Rogers, boss of Yahoo* Music, said to Digital Music Forum West last week. Here it is in context.
Ian Rogers: I’m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I’ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don’t have any more time to give and can’t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.
Someone buy that man a pint.
* Sorry Ian, I don’t do the bang.
I think Google must have a special dictionary that constantly redefines the word “evil” to suit their own ends. The words “privacy” and “competition” would seem to morph about quite a bit too.
In response to a letter the German data protection commissioner wrote to the European competition commissioner, coming out against the Google-Doubleclick deal, Google responded:
“We believe that this acquisition will increase competition and benefit both consumers and advertisers”.
Perhaps if they’d put the statement the other way around it would have been more believable. Of course it will benefit advertisers, since they’ll be in a much better position to target users as a result of the merge of company data. And it will benefit users on one level, in that those ads will be more relevant to them.
What about privacy though? Damien contends that the new kids on the block don’t care about privacy, and he’s probably right, but there’s plenty of us remaining that aren’t kids. And to be perfectly frank, many of us think those partiular kids are thick-as-shit reality TV vegetables, and their own worst enemies anyway.
To add insult to injury Google and DoubleClick add that “DoubleClick does not own, and has limitations on its use of, the data it processes for its publisher and advertiser clients”, which of course ignores the fact that DoubleClick does control the data. And the limitations.
But it’s the “increase competition” line that gets me. How exactly will a merger of two of the biggest advertising firms on the planet increase competition? Answer: it won’t. That would be a lie.
Little tip for you Google: Lying Is Bad. Some might call it “evil”.
Copyright © 2020 Adam Beecher. All Rights Reserved.
