Author: Zealus

Categories
annoyances

Telemarketers On My Cell – No, They Didn’t!

We all got used to some extent to the marketers calling us at our homes, at the most inconvenient times. Now they started attacking our cell phones. Just couple of hours ago got a minute-long automated voice message advertising some sort of carpet cleaning service. A little further drilling shows that I was not alone – here http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-516-962-0225 you can find quite a few annoyed people. Some of them report that “phone number traces back to “Brooks Fiber Communication” farmingdale long island”, however, I am unable to verify this.

In the early days if FIDO network, when “modems ruled the world” some pranksters got back to annoying callers by establishing crash-poll sessions in their dialer software. What such session does is repeatedly call specified number until certain packet of information successfully received. I am pretty sure such activity is illegal (and if it is not – it should be), but as far as I am concerned – some telemarketers should be excluded from the protection of law.

Of course, if anyone would be using the services of such ill-advertised company I’d say it is quite unwise.

Categories
outsourcing

Outsourcing At Home

If you ever went to local BestBuy, or even swung by – you already know what Geek Squad is. What you, probably, not realizing is that it’s the simplest form of local outsourcing. Buying a computer? Let the Geek Squad member install it for you. But there are only that many squad members on dorky white-orange-black cars.For years your local computer techs have dominated this scene. It was cheaper to build your PC from parts by you local computer store then to buy one from one of the big-name merchants. With Dell hitting hard on prices local techs are all but extinct. I know because I used to be one of those “can you fix my computer” guys. With less waiting time on the phone with tech support and fast replacement turnaround it is now next to impossible to make any decent income (even supplemental) from those gigs. For small businesses, however, it may just not be the case. Services like GeekSquad or similar are in demand. For an office of a dozen people having their own tech guy is very expensive. However, when you need an upgrade for your network, replacement of some old computers while retaining the data or setting up a backup solution – teams like this are indispensable.

From my perspective – it is a good thing. It keeps jobs in USA.

Categories
software

Blogging Editor – Crazy Wish List continues

In continuation of Blogging Editor saga – here’s some crazy ideas that I think worth mentioned. Not sure what would be the best course of action – write the whole thing up and pass it to someone who can create a piece of software or jump on this project myself. The problem with creating the software myself is that I do programming for Windows only. And a lot of bloggers use Mac. And I don’t even have Mac, and never had.

  • Have different flavors of the software – Windows, Linux, Mac
  • Have two types of software – free and paid
  • Probably outsource free version, while paid would have more elaborate features, targeted to Pro bloggers
  • Have the software to back up posts and tags into some sort of database that can be accessed without the software itself (like OpenOffice database or similar)
  • Ability to work with all major blogging platforms, including WordPress, WordPress.com, LiveJournal, Xanga, Vox, Blogger and so on.