Yesterday I was watching TV, when I saw a Swarovski commercial. I saw the model and I said “Hey, that girl makes advertisings in Japanese TV!”
I was immediately corrected:
“Hey, she’s Miranda Kerr, a famous Australian supermodel, famous for Victoria’s Secret!!!”
…
For me she was just “the girl from Lipton Ice Tea”: 
Since september I was searching for a DVD. Inside there were some important files, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I searched it for days, but I never found it.
Today, I decided to burn a new one (and recreate the files inside… boring…), since that DVD was missing, probably forever.Dagli inizi di settembre cercavo con urgenza un DVD con dei file importanti. L’ho cercato ovunque, per giorni, ma non l’ho mai trovato.
Guess what? Just three hours later, cleaning the bookshelf, a DVD drops on the ground. It was exactly the one I was searching for! Now that I don’t need it anymore!
Two months ago I lost an important DVD, with some files that I needed urgently. I searched it for weeks, but I never found it.
So, today, I decided to make a new one, since that DVD was definitely missing, forever.
Guess
what? Just after three hours later, I put some books on a shelf, and a
disk drops on the floor: it was the disk that I was searching, I found
it now that I don’t need it anymore!
This video is something really unique. An engineer doing a descriptive teardown of “his” product, is really awesome. (Source)
Some months ago I noticed a new game for my BlackBerry Z10: The Sims freeplay. Lots of enthusiastic reviews, console-grade quality, I was so excited. But I was in holiday, and I couldn’t download 700 megabytes over 3G.
Recently I remembered about it: now I’m at home, and with unlimited wifi I downloaded it.
It’s cool, it’s polished, I waste about one hour to create three Sims and then I run out of money. It’s ok, I’ll continue tomorrow, I tell to myself.
But the day after I’m just too busy at work I open it after a few days while I’m waiting at the post office.
Shock! All of my Sims are dying! I supposed that the game was pausing while it was closed! Well, not a big issue, I say. Just take a quick nap, a fast shower, watch some TV and some chit-chat between them.
WRONG! Now it works in real time! If you sleep, it takes 8 hours, if you want to watch tv, it takes 30 minutes; 2 hours to cook, and so on. And no, you can’t just give them a list of tasks to do while we are away! Moreover: the Sims aren’t self-sufficient! They need to go to pee? Even if they aren’t doing anything, they won’t go unless you tell them!
QSo, if you don’t play at this game for a single day, you have to waste three days to restore health levels… or you just PAY and continue playing!
Of course, with the big amount of RAM on the BlackBerry Z10 (four times as the iPhone 4S and twice as the iPhone 5s), it’s not a problem to leave the game running on the background forever and take a look every 5 minutes “hey, take a shower”, “hey wash your hands”, but in this way it becomes an addiction, it’s an unhealthy habit, it’s not a game!
I had three options:
Guess what I did…
Update: their customer service already replied to my letter, they were FAST!
They told me this:
We appreciate your comments about our fleet. We are currently replacing our older domestic aircraft with modern Boeing 737 and Airbus aircraft. The delivery of the 737s commenced in 2009, and the delivery of the Airbus aircraft began in the fall of 2013. On the international front, we have 42 Boeing Dreamliner aircraft on order, with estimated delivery dates commencing in 2014. We are also proud to be the first U.S. carrier to be flying Boeing’s 777-300ER. With these fleet enhancements, we anticipate having the youngest fleet out of our top U.S. competitors by 2017.
Very good customer service! Prompt and courteous! I reconsider my opinion on them.
Original story:
Some months ago I traveled with American Airlines and I have to say that I had the worst travel experience in my life. Even worse than when I traveled with Spring Airlines, a low cost Chinese airline.
The ticket was just $50 cheaper than a Lufthansa one, but the level of service was awful.
I wrote a letter to their customer relations team:
Hi, recently I had the “pleasure” to fly with American Airlines, on a transatlantic flight.
I was surprised to learn that the entertainment equipment in the aircraft is extremely outdated.
A small 13 inches CRT TV overhead, playing a videotape, to be watched from a far distance? Are we in the 1980s?
The audio was fuzzy and noisy, as if it was coming from a thirty years old radio.
Maybe this equipment was the best the technology offered, when you installed it in year 1982, but, hey, it’s time to upgrade!
Yes, upgrading it will cost a lot of money, but how many customers will you lose if you offer such a poor experience?
And it’s not only the entertainment system to be outdated, everything it’s.
From the aircraft painting, that reminds the 70s, to the ticketing system.The return flight was a British airways codeshare, but your system in MIA could not find it. I was sent to the BA counter, then they sent me back to your counter because it’s was a codeshare, then my connecting ticket at Heathrow could not be found. You could not emit the connecting flight ticket, even if it is the same oneworld network.
Why it doesn’t happen with Lufthansa and the star alliance network? Why it doesn’t happen with air france and the skyteam network? Probably it’s because they invested a lot of money and upgraded their systems, instead of keeping it outdated as you are doing.
Alitalia has a big financial problem, but when I traveled with them, the entertainment system was modern. Usb ports for charge phones or play movies from hard drives, lots and lots of movies, and so on.You might say that on your 777 there is an on demand movie system. Well, it looks like it’s just a frontend to an analog TV system: just four movies and you can’t decide when to play them. It might seemed exciting in year 1994, but now it’s not.
Concluding: you saved some money by keeping your airplanes unchanged for thirty years, but you lost a customer and I will warn all my friends to choose a better way to fly. Was it worth?
Will they answer me?
They definitely lost a customer.
(Update: in february 2014 I flew again with them and it was better)
If today, wednesday 18th september 2013, we go on the Apple US page, we can see that we can preorder an iPhone 5c with home delivery for 20th september.
Every color, with every memory and carrier combination is still available. The possible combinations are 50, and only ten of them are delayed by a week.
It’s possible that Apple has imported from China so many iPhone 5c (millions?) in all possible variants to avoid preorder problems? And some reports are saying that production is low due to some problems with camera modules.
If you remember what happened with the iPhone 5, the waiting list was long, people had to wait until december! The new iPhone 5c has been announced last week and it’s not sold out yet? Usually Apple sells millions of units in preorders. Maybe there are too many colors and people want to see which one looks better in their hands? Or maybe because if you pay just $100 more you can get the 5s that has a much better quality?
Update 2017: Imho it was a failure, otherwise they would have made the 6c, 7c, and so on
On 30th august, the online notetaking service Catch.com shut down for good.
How did I discover that? By reading this Springpad tweet! (from the competitors!)
RT @chriswaterguy: Was sad about the demise of @catch, but @springpad‘s import tool worked nicely, & I’m starting to like SpringPad. All…
— The Springpad Team (@springpad) September 3, 2013
They closed their service without sending an email to their users, they even didn’t tweet it!! Only reading a tweet by their competitor I got to know (3 days later) that they shut down the service!
Their latest public tweet is this retweet from their co-founder:
We just crossed 3.5 million @Catch users!! Wohooooo!
— aschobel (@aschobel) July 17, 2013
(A week before announcing the shutdown you boast about having 3.5 millions users? Bravo…)
And now? I lost 4 years of notes… thanks…
However, they aren’t the only one to behave like that. The TheOldReader guys on 5th august announced that they would have shutdown their website after two weeks. They didn’t send an email to their users also in this case. Hey, I’m in holiday vacation, I don’t check your blog everyday!!!
Today I did Windows Update on my PC. I immediately saw that there was something wrong: it kept rebooting saying “error applying the update, aborting…” (or something like that)
After 30 minutes, it still was doing that loop, so I rebooted it.
BOOM! At startup I got a lot of errorsi 0xc0000005! Dropbox, Evernote, the Antivirus, even the Task Manager, would just give this 0xc0000005 error and just close!!!
In the beginning I blamed myself, I thought I was infected by some virus.
I was in panic, then I discovered that there is a “botched” update that renders your PC useless!
But, the fix is easy. Go to the start menu and write appwiz.cpl. You can open the uninstall programs panel. Select “show installed updates”. Search for that bastard, his name is KB2859537.
Right click on it, and then UNINSTALL. Restart your computer: now it should work! If it doesn’t, try removing the latest six updates.
The operating systems affected by this problem are Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
I was thinking that was an hoax! A new Nintendo console to play 3D games on a 2D screen, with a “door stopper” design that’s impossible to put in pockets and take on the road! After the big gamepad-tablet on the Wii U, the great design geniuses conceive another monstrosity!
What do you think? In my opinion doesn’t make sense, for just $30 more it’s better to take the original 3DS.