Internet

YouTube – Contact Us

| Richard

Well I would … if I could find a contact form that doesn’t threaten me with being banned if I use it!

I’ve now received two ’strikes’ in 6 months from YouTube on an account of mine for videos I’d posted a couple of years ago. They’re not explicit or anything and yet – according to YouTube:

The following video(s) from your account have been disabled for violating the YouTube Community Guidelines:

  • {Video Name}

Everyone hates spam. Misleading descriptions, tags, titles or thumbnails designed to increase views are not allowed. It’s also not OK to post large amounts of untargeted, unwanted or repetitive content, including comments and private messages.

This is the second Community Guidelines warning sanction your account has received within six months. Accordingly, the ability to post new content to YouTube from this account has been disabled and will not return until two weeks after you acknowledge this message. Please review the YouTube Community Guidelines and refrain from further violations, which may result in the termination of your account(s).

Helpful eh? Of course they’ve also helpfully removed my ability to actually access the ‘offending’ video but having looked at the one in question offline, I really, really don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

So I thought I’d ask them to clarify what was wrong, but no. There’s no actual way on the YouTube site for me to be able to query this with anyone. How stupid are these people?

Windows Live Messenger for Mac – Longest Beta Ever?

| Richard

You know, sometimes I wish that Microsoft would simply grow up and get over its childish hatred of Apple and because of that its reluctance to embrace (and potentially embrace) Mac users.

A fabulous example of this is Microsoft’s Live Messenger and their long running and unresolved failures to actually support audio-visual conversations for users running a Mac.

I use both a PC (actually a Tablet PC) and a Mac and I have just bought another laptop running Windows Vista (with an upgrade to Windows 7 coming in due course). On the Windows platforms I can run Live Messenger and hook up a webcam to have a face to face conversation with another Windows Live user.

If I’m at my flat on the Mac, I cannot.

Back in December 2008, Microsoft announced a forthcoming beta release of Messenger for Mac which would offer A/V support in 2009. Now, some 10 months later, there’s still no sign of it on the horizon, far less a final release version.

Pathetic!

Internet-Only Football Coverage

| Richard

So the England -v- Ukraine football match will only be available to view (at cost) on the Internet.

“[Kentaro] said Kentaro would take a maximum of one million subscribers for the match – which he said equates to about 2.5 million viewers – because this would be the “safe number to stop at to ensure the optimal broadcast”.

Hmm. I’m not sure my broadband connection – as much as 768kbps at times… –  will ever provide “the optimal broadcast” for any streaming media.

“Andrew Croker, executive chairman of Perform, insisted England fans would “embrace” the internet broadcast.

“I think consumers are pretty sophisticated now, particularly in the UK, where we have been in the vanguard of adopting new technology,” he told BBC Sport.

“I think people want a choice – the chance to watch football in a different way. This is pioneering, very exciting and I think people will enjoy it.”

Yes it would be a different way for me – rather than high quality and effectively free broadcast on my television, I can have intermittent and choppy images on my Mac if I’m prepared to pay through the nose for it. Well guess what: I’m not!

William Hill Hacked?

| Richard

Hmm. Well that’s interesting. I’ve just received a junk e-mail to an e-mail address set up specifically for use on the William Hill website some months back.

So does that mean someone’s hacked their customer database or is it just a bizarre coincidence that someone has managed to combine their site name with one of my domain names? Hmm…

Fail: iTunes Gift Cards

| Richard

“And best of all, iTunes gift cards are convenient and fast. You can buy them online or in hundreds of stores nationwide, email them, print them out or gift select items directly to someone special.”

Well you can … if you have iTunes installed on the machine you are at when you want to make a purchase.

I decided that buying an iTunes gift card might be an option for my niece and when I received an e-mail from Apple advertising them, I clicked on the link.

The landing page, however, looks for iTunes on the machine and if you don’t have it installed – as is the case on my work laptop – then that’s it. No purchase is possible.

iTunes Fail

Fail!

British Gas

| Richard

A little bit of fun and games today thanks to the British Gas web site. I wanted to change my log-in details as a usual security update so I logged in and accessed my account. I chose a new password and submitted it and an error was thrown up: basically the chosen password was too short.

So I went back in again and tried once more with a much longer password. This time, it failed again as the password has to include at least one number.

So I tried again.

Now wouldn’t it be good if they could have told me that the password had to be between x and y characters long and include at least one number and one letter in the same error message? Sloppy coding, boys…

So Long, iCards

| Richard

I found out very recently that possibly my favourite free service on the Internet is no more. It’s a sad loss.

A friend was celebrating their birthday, so as usual I decided to go to Apple’s iCard site to send them an iCard. These were electronic greeting cards: you selected the image you wanted, selected the typeface, wrote your greeting, added the recipient’s e-mail address and clicked the send button. The recipient would then receive an e-mail from you with the card as a JPEG attachment. Simple, elegant and spam-free.

For some reason, it was a service that Apple provided free of charge despite being at least nominally part of their .Mac package – I had this for a while but decided it wasn’t worth the money to me as I had more than enough provision elsewhere.

And It Just Worked.

But now Apple has rolled out its MobileMe service and has confirmed that the iCards service is no longer available. Their suggested solution?

“If you do not use Mac OS X v10.5, there are many third-party greeting card services that are available online that can easily be located using your favorite Internet search engine.”

That’s as may be, but without exception – in my experience – they’re all shite and/or look like Spam/dodgy sites. Another blogger, Thomas Fitzgerald, puts it very well:

“Most e-card sites and services offer either advertising riddled flash cards or ridiculous website hoop jumping for the recipient to receive their card. Many offer poor quality animation and annoying sound in something that looks more like spam than a greeting card. Apple’s solution on the other hand was incredibly simple. They licensed some high quality artwork and photography and made it super simple to both send and receive. For the sender, you simply select an image, add your message, select the recipient and click send. On the receiver’s end they simply got an email with a jpeg of the card and message attached to the email. No jumping through hoops, no clicking through websites, no barrage of advertising. Simple, effective, elegant, and unfortunately, soon to be gone.”

Amen to that.