Category: Software & Technology

Stupid customer service tricks

My life insurance company has an automated system for contacting customers who miss a premium payment. You see, I got a new policy and I am allowing the old one to expire. My agent told me to simply not pay the bill from the old policy.

So this automated system calls me up in the morning. This is fine; if someone misses a payment due to an error you’d expect this. But it’s automated.  It says that I need to hold to speak to a customer service representative.

So I hold.

And hold.

Finally, after being told that a customer service representative would be with me in “just a moment,” the system gives me a new recording: the phone number to call to speak to a customer representative.  Then it hangs up on me.

Huh?

You’d think that an automated system that calls customers and puts them on hold would have some kind of load balancing algorithm that would stop calling customers when all of the customer service representatives were already occupied!

Keyword Stuffer SpamPro Elite Gold

Web marketing seems to come down to one of two things:

1. Stay on the cusp of search engine manipulation. Keep one step ahead of Google so that you can have well-ranking web pages that customers will blunder on to, only to have to click an AdWord link to get to what they were looking for in the first place. Or,

2. Work steadily to create legitimately useful content, and hope the search engines will eventually notice its value and send users your way.

After looking around for a while, it seems that all of the keyword research tools available cater to the get-rich-quick school of thought (number 1 above). The “Keyword this-and-that” programs have mile-long web pages full of infomercial style sales pitches, promising that once you buy their software you’ll be an instant internet mogul. They make my skin crawl just scrolling down the pages.

I can’t seem to find much for those of us in group #2.

My main goal in web marketing is to help my customers find me.  I know they are out there. The trick is writing articles and pages that word their problems in the same ways they do, so they’ll find them.

I’ve decided that I should develop my own keyword research software. I have some very specific needs in mind that I don’t see being filled by these programs.

What about you?  If your work includes web marketing, have you ever thought “hey, I need something that does X?” Let me know.

Software Has Limits

As I write this, somewhere around 8,000 people are stuck in LAX waiting to go through customs because of a computer glitch.

Frankly, I am amazed this doesn’t happen more often. This reminds me of a book I recently read called The Limits of Software. Anyone who is curious about why computers and software so frequently don’t work properly would benefit from reading it.

The Limits of Software is a sort of docu-drama in book form about the massive failed attempt at upgrading the Federal Aviation Administration’s ancient computer systems. The event is a case-study proving that all the money in the world can’t make the impossible happen. But since the government can just spend, spend, spend, they sure did give the impossible a try. I highly recommend this book for programmers or anyone who wants to understand what kind of problems programmers are always trying to solve.

What it all boils down to is that software is a means of describing abstract human thought for computers to understand and implement in reality. It will never be perfect.

No consolation for the 8,000 poor folks stranded in LAX, I know.

Red Microsoft beats Pinko Linux

Interesting post from Jason Hiner at TechRepublic: How Microsoft beat Linux in China and what it means for freedom, justice, and the price of software

“Even with the cut-rate fees for students and the government, Microsoft will still collect an estimated $700 million in revenue from China in 2007. That amounts to only about 1.5% of Microsoft’s total revenue worldwide, but the battle for mind share has been won. Windows now has roughly 90% market share in China. There are currently 120 million PCs in China, but that number is expected by grow exponentially in the coming decades, and Microsoft is in a great position to reap the benefits.”

[…]

“The fact that Red Flag Linux failed to gain a major foothold in China is yet another blow to desktop Linux. After nearly eight years of being on the verge of a breakthrough, Linux seems more destined than ever to be a force in the server room but little more than a narrow niche and an anomaly on the desktop.”

Implementing a Partial Serial Number Verification System in Delphi

Most micro-ISVs use a serial number/registration code system to allow end users to unlock or activate their purchase.  The problem most of us have run into is that a few days or weeks after our software is released, someone has developed a keygen, a crack, or has leaked a serial number across the internet.

There are several possible solutions to this problem. You could license a system like Armadillo/Software Passport or ASProtect, or you could distribute a separate full version as a download for your paying customers. Each option has advantages and disadvantages. What I am going to show you is a way to keep “rolling your own” license key system while making working cracks harder for crackers to produce, and working keygens a thing of the past.

Continue reading Implementing a Partial Serial Number Verification System in Delphi