I have been working on 3 new Technical posts. One is a piece about remote systems management, another about outside joins in MSAccess and the last one about irritating uninvited advertising in your Blog and that notice that you need to update to a new version of WordPress. Talk about heavy. Why not have some fun?
I thought I would start by saying, I like this.
But, do you notice how ….
An interesting support situation has just been resolved with Ebay. All of a sudden listings started to fail to be found when searching. After much head scratching and checking of listings it became clear that something had happened at their end.
An enquiry produced the response that an upgrade had been made to the database server the same day as the fault. No one could say why that would lead to lost listings. After two weeks and trying everything they and we could think of, it suddenly emerged that Ebay Australia had decided to filter out all listings that had the word ‘asbestos’. Really!
The catch is; that included listings that stated the product had no asbestos. It’s working now, but I am not sure what fix they put in. Just for this site? And what else does Ebay ban?
The problem of the erratic mouse has been around for some time. Having personally experienced this fault, I know it can be one of the most puzzling and frustrating problems.
In my experience, there are five unrelated causes to this problem. The difficulty comes when trying to work out what is the issue for you. If you get it wrong, the prospect is that you will add a new cause rather than solve your problem.
The best way to proceed is as follows:
1) Your mouse might actually be faulty (though this is rare). Or, it may be dirty so that the trackball does not run smoothly or the optical window is blurred, depending upon the type of mouse you have. The best way to eliminate the mouse itself is to try it on another PC.
2) If you have an Optical mouse (one with light emitting from it’s base), then the absolutely most common cause of erratic movement will be your Mouse Pad or the surface that you have the mouse on. Almost any surface can cause the light refraction to be uneven and confuse the mouse as to the direction of movement. The mouse may not even need to be moved for this to occur. Simple vibration in the environment can be enough to cause a light shift to which the mouse will respond. So always start treating the erratic mouse fault by using a velvet finish, dark coloured mouse mat. These are usually the cheapest you can buy and have the best light response characteristics.
3) Once you have the correct mouse pad, if the problem persists, then you need to check your BIOS settings. Some BIOS allow for a USB mouse. I don’t know what this setting does, except that if set incorrectly it can cause the erratic mouse problem. I suspect the reason may be due to a timing of the interrupt for the USB port; as a mouse is an always-on device whereas many USB devices are temporary attached or intermittent use.
4) Are you sure you did the above? This third step should only rarely be required and can make the previous two causes worse thus making your fix harder to achieve. Go to: START/CONTROL PANEL/MOUSE/HARDWARE/PROPERTIES/ADVANCED SETTINGS/SAMPLE RATE Set the rate lower than already shown and whilst on the way through make sure that the mouse installed is what you have (There is also a listing for HID compliant mouse. Ignore this as it is a system interface protocol driver used by windows to map the mouse hardware to the desktop via USB.) Really you should not need to be here at all. So are you absolutely sure you did steps 1 and 2.
5) Still not working, then you are in some difficult territory. Make some careful observations. If the problem occurs when you have multiple instances of your Internet browser or other multiple programs open, then I have found that this arises when you shift focus, or close a window. In this case, the issue is memory displacement and management and there is no fix that I am aware of. However, this fault is very rare and not persistent even when it is a factor. At least you will not have to put up with it often.
Oops! I trusted Microsoft again and look where it has got me!
Yes folks, I decided to accept the auto-update from Microsoft to go to IE7. Three hours later I am finally using it. But, only if I select RUN and start iexplore from the command prompt. Seems I am not alone there, looking at some other posts. There is no IE on the Start menu or the Programs Menu. So, for all intents and purposes, installing IE7 has meant that it is gone for good. Is that what they meant when they said it was improved?
Oh, yes and I could not re-install IE6 because the install program complained that a ‘later version’ was present, even after I had uninstalled IE7. You would have thought that Microsoft could get the install of their only successful Internet product right. But, hey, that just might be the problem here. When was the last time Microsoft actually built a success, instead of Buying or emulating something? I don’t recall, but have fond memories of DOS5. Now that was a leap forward.
Another curious feature is that the ‘runonce’ to configure IE7 loads pages using my default browser which is Firefox and can’t interact with the IE settings that it is supposed to be live updating.
On the positive side, the interface is a bit cleaner. Reminds me a bit of Opera. Surely not ……….
No doubt the bugs will be ironed out with some auto-update, some time in the future, surely, probably, perhaps, maybe. Maybe not.
Once you make the decision to get online and have registered your domain name, the immediate problem you face is how to choose a suitable provider. The first part of the decision is very simple. You have to decide what level of performance you want for your site. If you are going to develop a commercial site it is important that you select a provider that is in close physical proximity to your main market. So, if you are selling to Australians, you will need to host in Australia.
If performance is not important to you (and your customers), you can select a web host provider almost anywhere in the world.
The reason for this is that within geographic markets, ISPs participate in National peer networking that delivers local content at low cost and high performance. ISPs will, in most cases, have high capacity pipes between them that allow users at any node to get near equivalent performance.
Once you set up your site on a server in another geographic zone, your traffic back to your home zone will be noticeably slower. If you do a lot of Email or transfer large files, slow performance can be frustrating.
Another factor to consider is how you will cope with system problems that will arise. In most cases it will be you who does the diagnosis of a fault. Support staff are often under heavy demand and so require concise fault information. They also receive a lot of calls for user-end errors and so may not immediately accept that a fault exists. If your provider is based in the US or Europe and your traffic is mostly Australian, you will find that the peak periods of traffic to your site are at times when the ISP will have minimum staff ready to fix faults and provide support. That is not to say that Australian ISPs will always be prompt. Some have very few support staff and may even close after hours. It is important that you consider how much downtime is acceptable to you, then choose a provider that can respond to faults within that time span.
By way of example, a well-known Australian provider had a recent outage on one server that took approximately 15 hours to rectify. Although they claim a 99.9% service availability overall, for those on that server, this single outage breached that statistic. We have experienced faults at significant US based provider sites that have extended as much as 4 days! The fact is that stability and support have a direct relationship to the price paid for hosting. Our experience is that the most stable provider, offering best support, is also the most expensive.
The type of site you want to operate will also have an influence. An Ecommerce site can be expensive to install with some providers. You need to check the cost of buying SSL certificates, having them installed and the provision of a permanent IP address. Costs for these vary largely between providers.
One of the most successful Australian businesses we know relies on email for over 90% of its web-based revenue. Web host providers offer Email services using different strategies. Some ISP’s place your SMTP and POP on the same server as your Web content. Others have high performance specialised Email servers. Each approach has different advantages and cost structures to operate.
Generally, we place high value content with local providers, with non-critical sites and bulk content hosted in the US.
Whenever a customer leaves your business unsatisfied, you not only have lost that sale but the future growth potential from all others who had the same need and similarly did not consider that you could satisfy them.
A recent coincidence of events provides some fresh insight into this. Both these examples come from the food industry, namely McDonalds and Subway. These are both well run franchises, with solid business models.
In one case, the business operator was short staffed. Customers were queuing for service and then giving up and leaving. This had the effect of creating frustration and discouraged return visits. Others, seeing the queue, would simply decide not to join it and turn around and walk away.
In the other case, there was a consistent customer product demand that the operator knew was going unmet. Other operators in the franchise group had already taken the upgrade. However, the new features required a very large investment and it was difficult to commit to meet this new demand. The store operator felt it was not really core to their operations and they were doing a good job already. He simply did not understand the need. He resisted the customer feedback and watched over a long period as customers left the store without making a purchase.
Both these businesses were losing current and potential business. Each decided finally to act. One doubled their staff and found that there was sufficient demand to meet this 100% increase in staff level. In fact the realisation was that they could service even more customers if the store was expanded further. The other made a large commitment of $250,000 to remodel their store and found a whole new customer base that significantly exceeded the needed revenue targets. They were amazed and pleased by the response and sales growth. It opened a whole new opportunity.
The key feature of both these outcomes was not that they retained existing loyal customers, but that in both cases they expanded their market share. Listen to your customers and invest in their needs. Your future is in them.
(Apologies to Kermit)
The excitement of having your web site listed in a major daily newspaper is hard to overlook. Imagine the hit rate now! You might reasonably expect that a half page article about you and your site will pull in vast numbers. The fact is sometimes surprisingly different. Not every article that makes it into the news will gain the same readership or result. The case of a filmmaker who managed to get the story of their self-funded movie published is a good example here. The story was well written but the topic failed to gain traction. The number of downloads of the trailer 48 hours later was under 600. When you consider that a popular YouTube clip will get 300,000 or more downloads, 600 is a very low result.
What went wrong?
The concept was good – send out a press release, get some free publicity. But the message missed the mark. The newspaper’s audience was wrong – the topic was not suited and the article just didn’t make the video sound interesting. It concentrated on the producer’s story and not the content. It just did not make you want to see the video. What they missed out on therefore was the impact of social networking - the YouTube phenomena of punchy content with a clear message.
The Internet is vast and its operation and the software used to access and develop applications on the Internet is not within our control. Adverse events or circumstances will arise. Experience shows that regardless of all efforts expended, something will occur that will exceed the capacity of the situation. Usually this will be in the form of a known but unpredictable threat such as a server failure, virus or Ecommerce fraud.
Very few ICT companies are prepared to inform their clients about risk and provide a understanding of their role in the process. The outcome of not being informed is a false assumption that the services being provided will always be flawless. The real difficulty is that unlike other commercial risks, Insurance cover is hard/impossible to get or too expensive for a small enterprise. That means that in most cases the business is self-insuring or carrying the risk itself.
Two examples of unexpected risk come to mind. A few years ago a major hardware/software vendor released a Web Host Appliance Server for use by ISPs and small business. It was very popular. The software had a security vulnerability and one day thousands of these appliance servers were hacked and disabled. The only way to fix the problem was to reload the servers from scratch meaning many domains were offline for 24 hours or more as technical staff struggled with a truly catastrophic failure.
The present day scare ( 3/12/07) over WPAD vulnerability for Microsoft Internet Explorer, shows that evan a bug that was first identified and repaired back in 1999, can unexpectedly re-emerge.
(Microsoft Security Bulletin (MS99-054)
Patch Available for “WPAD Spoofing” Vulnerability http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms99-054.mspx).
It is amazing to find code that had been eliminated re-enter the development cycle, but here apparently is a clear example of it.
The fact is: adverse events will occur that are outside of the reasonable control of both customer and ISP.
One of the most important aspects of the Internet is ‘immediacy’. We get used to having what we want, when we want it.
It is easy for a business to overlook that and so create a less than favourable impression. A recent online purchase comes to mind. The $99 price point was excellent for the product and the company was reputable, so I placed an order. The system backend worked OK and I got a confirmation email pretty quick, followed by another welcoming me as a new customer. All good so far.
Imagine my disappointment to receive an email a day later telling me that my $99 purchase would “arrive within the standard delivery time for the area, which is 07 days”. There are a few problems with this.
So this is where the experience fell down. Now, instead of being excited to get my new purchase, I was unhappily waiting for their shipping department to tell me when it would arrive. Their email made it clear that I had already been billed. If they can process my credit card promptly, why not my delivery?
Five (5) days later the goods arrived unannounced. It seems that their back-office systems do not integrate with despatch, only ordering and billing. This is another deficiency that creates a less than complete customer experience. It says that the systems are their for them, not for me. Worse still, I was not required to sign for the goods and so there is no formal record of a successful delivery! That is a big risk for both me and them.
Keeping the customer informed and prompt action are fundamental to running a business online. Even the most ordinary Ebay home business will usually ship within 24 hours and communicate actions with their customers. If your back-office procedures and systems are not robust, you will spend more time than necessary dealing with errors and enquiries. When you consider the cost and time it takes to attract a new customer, the extra effort involved in having comprehensive back-office systems is very small. If you can’t afford professional development of your Ecommerce systems, organise a professional to review what you develop. At the very least ask an experienced online shopper to give you an honest opinion.
One thing that happens is that you will feel under pressure to produce new content. Many bloggers fall into the trap of trying to write something new every day. That’s fine if your topic allows for it. For example commentary on the day’s TV, financial markets or perhaps your daily life. However, daily entries need to offer some new insight to benefit your audience.
If you are intending to write about yourself, keep in mind that you have no idea who is reading. Personal information can lead to Identity Theft. If you go on holiday for a month but have told the whole world all about where you live, the physical security of your property might be put at risk.
Not everything in life has equal meaning. A 500 word analysis of the 2007 Federal election results is useful, whereas, 20 words expressing your love or dismay of the 2007 winner of Australian Idol is enough to get the point across.
A useful approach is to create your Blog content on two levels. Firstly, a series of forward planned topics written in advance, put aside for a day or so, then reviewed and edited before going live. This technique is the way most successful book authors work. When you put aside your work for a few days, returning to it gives fresh insight, closer to how the reader will perceive it. Your content will still be ‘fresh’ but tighter. Secondly, write short and sweet responses to things that just crop up and feel very fresh in your mind.