Chausse.org

Well well, it looks like my old boss has done quite well for himself. This is obviously huge news no matter how you slice it. What does it mean for Microsoft? Well, Ray is a visionary, no doubt about it. I’ve talked with him personally, and, of course, felt the impact of his ideas - his mind truly does seem to operate three years in the future. So, in terms of technological vision, Microsoft should excel (no pun intended).

But there are two things that worry me. One: Microsoft spends a lot of time and effort on some rather dull stuff. Not everything at Microsoft is as cool as Vista or Groove. I think Ray will get bored pretty quickly.

Also, Ray is a Nice Guy (though the details of the Groove acquisition undoubtedly left a sour taste in some mouths). This may bode well for PR purposes, but Ray will never have the cutthroat nature of Bill back in the day. And with Google supposedly getting more Evil every day, this could be a real liability. Because, as we all learned from Spaceballs, Evil will always win… because Good is dumb.

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Several years ago, I had to cancel AOL for my mother when she moved to a broadband account, and it was such a nightmarish experience, I regretted not getting it on record. The experience shot my blood pressure up so high I almost passed out. The “customer service” agent had me so agitated, I was literally shaking.

Some other person just like me had the foresight to actually record his experience (.MP3), and I have to say it was nearly identical to my experience. One tactic use is to bombard you with high pressure sales tactics, wait until they have your cursing them out - then refuse to talk to you unless you “calm down” - creating an endless cycle in which they’re apparently attempting to avoid the cancellation by causing you to die from an aneurysm.

(If you can’t load the MP3, there are mirrors and such available via Digg)

Now that it’s long over, l’esprit d’escalier has me mentally cooking up interesting ways to deal with the AOL CSR.

Here’s one I’d be dying to try out… Right as the conversation begins, tell the rep this: “I’d be happy to hear about any incentives that you’d like to offer to convince me to stay, but to save time for both of us, if I press the ‘pound’ key on the phone, that means ‘thank you for that information, but I’d still like to cancel.’ - OK, now please go ahead.” Damn, that would be a funny conversation…

Filed under The Internet Biz 2 Comments »

If you’re wondering if a one person company can be successful, look no further than PlentyOfFish.com. This dating site is run by a single person, and is making almost half a million dollars a month from Google AdSense alone. Wow.

Hm… my second post about a dating site this month - my wife will start getting suspicious!

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All the hubbub surrounding Google’s dealings with China is starting to annoy me. People claim that Google is violating their “no evil” rule by offering a censored version of their web site to Chinese users. This is just ridiculous.

Google does absolutely NOTHING to block Chinese users from Google.com - nothing. The Chinese goverment filters search results that it doesn’t like - thereby making Google.com behave unpredictably to Chinese users. (Nonetheless, 99% of Google hits from China still go to “google.com” and not “google.cn”)

The Chinese government is going to censor Internet pages it doesn’t like - no matter what. Therefore, Google made a version that’s pre-censored - giving users relatively the same results, but in a more predictable and robust manner.

Google has basically been given two options by the Chinese government - provide users with censored and buggy service, or censored and reliable service. It chose the latter (and, actually, kept the former available as an option).

People who are on the warpath against Google are acting like Google had a third option - to provide uncensored results to Chinese users. Google is a big, powerful company, but it can’t single-handledly overturn one of the fundamental policies of a near-superpower government.

Should Google, as a champion for free access to information, protest China’s censorship policies? Yes. Can it, through sheer willpower - or even bribery, for that matter, just make them go away? No.

So, Google is offering the best possible service it can to Chinese users, under non-ideal situations that it can’t control. Sorry, but this just doesn’t feel that evil to me. It’s the Chinese goverment that’s evil.

People complain that Google has become too powerful, yet at the same time they pretty much expect them to overthrow a goverment. Well, which is it?

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I’ve added a new section to the site called “Jeff 2.0” (it’s right there up in the red bar). This page is basically a directory to my presence on various “social” web sites.

While I intend to keep Chausse.org around for the rest of my mortal days, my interest in adding functionality to it (especially functionality which can be found elsewhere for free) has waned drastically. In the past 8 months, I’ve gotten married, taken on a challenging new job, became a father-to-be(!), turned 30, and started the process of buying a home. Strangely enough, random web hacking has dropped WAAAY down my list of priorities for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, there are so many cool sites for sharing stuff online that I can still have an interesting web presence without doing a whole lot of work - hence “Jeff 2.0.”

I still have lots of cool ideas in my noggin, so I hope that I don’t get too boring as I approach middle age, but coding little hacks “for the heck of it” just doesn’t hold much appeal for me these days. Anyway, the point being: Jeff 2.0 - bookmark it, live it, love it.

Filed under Personal Notes, This Site, Web 2.0 3 Comments »