New Google Maps feature
Friday, June 29, 2007 - 08:57 AM
I always thought it would be cool (actually, more extremely practical than cool) if you could change the route that Google gives you when you look up directions in Google Maps. Well, now you can! Don’t like the route Google gave you? Know that there’s construction on a certain road, or that traffic always sucks on a particular street? Just drag the blue line to the road you’d rather take.
It’s a little flaky right now, but give it time. The main thing is that it tries to route your “detour” back to it’s original route as quickly as possible, so you might end up having to drag different sections of the route to your preferred one to get it right. Hopefully it’ll get better (and since it’s Google, I expect it will).
What it does seem well suited for, though, is if you’re planning a trip you can easily plot side trips for sightseeing purposes. Maybe this is what the programmers had in mind, but to me it seems much more practical as a way of telling Google I’d rather take the Eisenhower to the west suburbs than the Kennedy today, because I know traffic out to O’Hare is going to be a bitch.
Norton, how I hate thee, let me count the ways - Part One
Thursday, June 28, 2007 - 06:57 PM
Someone explain to me how it takes two hours to install a simple update to Norton Antivirus? I’m getting really tired of Symantec’s home/individual PC products. I’ve been telling people for years to stay away from the Norton Internet Security package and to stick with just the Norton Antivirus. Now, I’m starting to tell people to stay away from Norton all together.
The sad part is, the corporate Symantec products are decent products. I have plenty of clients using Symantec Corporate Antivirus, and Backup Exec (which I’ve been using since way back, long before it was a Symantec Product).
But the Norton line of products just keeps getting worse. (Again, Norton was not always a Symantec product.) There’s their stupid firewall, which used to be the main reason to stay away from their Internet Security suite, but now is part of the regular antivirus.
Note to Symantec: Every other software based firewall on the market automatically configures itself for Windows file and printer sharing, why the hell can’t yours? File and printer sharing is not turned on by default, so if I’ve turned it on that probably means that I intend to use it. Not only can other computers not connect to me when your stupid firewall is installed (without extra configuration to allow it), but it’s insane that I can’t connect to other computers or network printers with your stupid firewall. That’s just stupid. Really, get with it.
I’ve also encountered several issues over the years with your stupid Live Update feature. Originally, Live Update was a great thing, but it’s just gotten buggy and annoying over the years. How many times have I had to reinstall Live Update? How many computers have I encountered where Live Update inexplicable doesn’t work, and no amount of uninstalling and reinstalling will fix it, forcing people to manually download the updates from the website? Too many. (And forget about calling Symantec support for help - unless you’re a corporation with a gold level support agreement - you’ll get some outsourced idiot who doesn’t know a damn thing and tells you that it’s not working because they’re having a temporary problem with the Live Update servers. Anything to quickly get the customer off the phone so you don’t have to actually deal with their problem.)
I can never recommend Norton products to anyone ever again. When I started this little rant I mentioned a two hour update to Norton Antivirus. That was the last straw as far as I’m concerned. The Norton installer/uninstaller is just another thing that has gotten worse over the years. Stay tuned for Part Two, wherein I chronicle may journey through what should have been a simple 5 to 10 minute procedure.
Note to SBC
Friday, June 08, 2007 - 03:10 PM
It would really be helpful if you didn’t randomly change your customers’ static public IP addresses without telling them first.
This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with this issue with SBC. I have some clients who (unfortunately) have SBC as their ISP. A few of them have static public IP addresses, which they need for various reasons which are unimportant here. Obviously, their networks (firewalls, VPNs, what have you) behind the router (DSL modem) are configured with the static address information. For various reasons, SBC will change the clients’ IP address. This is usually when a change is made to the account, like a different price plan or speed.
Again, this is not the first time I’ve dealt with this. My client will call me up and say their internet is down. I’ll go through some troubleshooting over the phone. I’ll start with the basics, checking to make sure everything is plugged in and has the appropriate lights on, then having them restart everything just to be sure. Then I’ll move on to pinging the firewall, the router, stuff on the outside by IP address instead of domain name, etc. Then I’ll have them log in to the firewall and the router and check the settings. (Of course, if I’m near their office and can get there in a timely fashion, I’ll do all of this myself.)
Once I determine that everything on their network is functioning properly, and that the problem is outside of their network, I have them call SBC (or, if I’m on site, I’ll call). Now is when the real fun begins. You see, if you have never dealt with SBC support for their internet services, their de-facto answer is “the problem’s on your end”. They don’t check anything, they don’t test anything, they just tell you that the problem isn’t them, it’s you. If it’s the customer on the phone with them, they really have no recourse at this point and end up calling me back. If I’m on the phone with them, I can begin to explain why I know that the problem is SBC’s. Eventually, we get around to the fact that SBC did, in fact, change the customer’s IP settings.
Okay, again, not the first time I’ve dealt with this. This is so aggravating for several reasons:
First, doesn’t it occur to SBC that if their customers have plans with static public IP addresses there is probably a good reason for that, and that arbitrarily changing the IP address just might cause some problems for them?
Second, even if there’s some technical reason for making the change, which I tend to doubt, why in the world would you do it without notifying the customer beforehand? Really. That’s just insane.
But lastly, when the customer calls for support because of this change, which I might point out is inevitable, don’t friggin’ sit there and tell them that the problem is on their network!! It should be painfully obvious to the first support person that you talk to, once they look at your account information (assuming that they actually are), that there has been a change made to their account. What’s going on here? Why does it take more than one call, or having to convince the support person otherwise, to figure this out?
Basically it comes down to this: Why does SBC train their support personnel to just say “the problem’s on your end” without actually doing any troubleshooting, or even looking at the customer’s account information?