explodedlibrary.info

customer service by chat

So I've just moved. Until I have broadband internet access set up at my new place, please excuse if I'm slow at replying to emails, moderating comments or indeed reading many blog posts. As well as all the unpacking and setting things up for a new household, I am also trying to get reconnected at home.

Seeing that I don't enjoy making (or receiving) phone calls to call centres, I thought that I'd try out the chat system offered by one of the bigger players in the Australian telco market. Big waste of time.

Things were going ok up until the point when I checked to see if they supported Macs - knowing before that they used to have issues with Macs. Just after telling me that Mac OS 10.4 should be ok, the customer service rep. asked me, "which version of windows does it have?" I explained, patiently and tactfully I hope, how that wasn't relevant.

There was a pause for several minutes - and then the chat session was abrubtly ended. I can only assume that he hung up on me. It's a bit of a worry.

I am asking myself - did I waste as much time this way as I would have if I'd phoned them, waited on hold for 5-10 minutes, and then spoken to the same clueless person over the phone? Maybe not, but I am guessing that it would have been easier for me to ask for this person's supervisor as soon as I started having doubts about his expertise. Also, if my experience at Vodafone is anything to go by, it's very rare for a call centre operator to be allowed to hang up on a customer. We were only allowed to do it when they started swearing at us and we had warned them that we would not put up with that sort of language. Released calls were monitored and counted, just like everything else, and always had to be justified. Maybe the online chatting is still so new that it's not monitored as vigourously.

Which is quite short-sighted - after all it would be very difficult for me to post an audio recording (or even transcript) of a call centre exchange on the web - but it was very easy to take a screen shot and post this on the web. It makes me think about virtual reference in libraries too - with a different medium comes different expectations and standards.

left-handed adventures with Mighty Mouse

I am somehow doubting that Apple's Mighty Mouse is going to be a raging success. Even at the Apple stores I've been to lately in Australia and the US, Microsoft and Logitech mice seem to be getting more loving than Apple's new mouse. I'm no marketing person, but I think that Apple needs to give this product a different name. Mighty Mouse may be a good nickname or something catchy to use in advertising copy, but I don't think it works as the official name. Even I felt a little embarrassed asking for the Mighty Mouse.

Other than the name, it's a pretty nifty mouse. I was worried that the scroll wheel/button was way too small to use effectively - but that hasn't been a problem at all. It seems to allow for some very precise scrolling. And it is very nice to be able to do horizontal scrolling - especially in the Finder and applications like Photoshop.

My scroll button is set up so that clicking on it opens and closes the Dashboard. For me at least, this has made the Dashboard a lot more accessible and I may use it more.

I wasn't so sure how the idea of invisible left and right buttons would work - but it hardly took anytime to get used to. Clicking on the top right area of the mouse is the same as a regular click (well for most people, see below for my left-handed experience), clicking the top left area is a left click.

The weirdest thing about the Mighty Mouse are the side squeeze buttons. Maybe in a few more days, squeezing the sides of a mouse will be second nature to me, but it still seems kind of odd. Initially it was quite awkward - what if I don't squeeze the two side buttons exactly simultaneously - will something bad happen? (the answer to that question is no) The squeezing movement is different - the only analogy is like giving somebody a bad handshake where the hand doesn't open properly. The necessary pressure would greater than a dead fish handshake but the firmness of a good firm handshake wouldn't be necessary - not that this would break the mouse.

I have Mighty Mouse set so that the side buttons open Exposé - something which will make this a lot more accessible and useful for me - the idea of using Exposé by function keys or screen corners never ever worked well for me. But it's also possible to set the side buttons - or left click or right click or scroll button - to do anything else - such as open the desktop, any application or an Automator workflow.

Now for my left-handed story. I'm a left hander, and prefer to do my mousing with my left hand, using the forefinger for most of the clicking. This means setting the buttons the other way around from the default - so that right button is the main one and the left button brings up the contextual menus. Like most left-handers I need to survive in the right-handed world. In my current job, the shared reference and circulation computers have right-handed settings - and I am able to use them without too many hassles. That said, on my own computers at home and work, I always do left-handed mousing - I work faster and think more clearly and am happier this way.

Anyway, when I first tried using Mighty Mouse I thought it was badly broken. There seemed no way getting a regular click - everything seemed to open the contextual menus. After some tweaking, I got it so it worked as a regular right-handed mouse held in my left hand - the most annoying and confusing of all mousing worlds for me. Then I realized what was going on. I unplugged the Apple mouse and returned its predecessor, a fairly basic Logitech two-button mouse with a scroll wheel. With that mouse plugged in, I changed the Logitech mouse settings back from left-handed style mousing to the default right-handed settings. When I plugged the Mighty Mouse back and set its settings to left-handed mousing, everything worked as expected.

no more rumours - the iTunes Music store is finally open in Australia!

I haven't had time to take a really good look at it, but it's definitely open and features Australian artists. But nothing from Sony. There's more information in the Sydney Morning Herald. I know I'm going to waste a lot of money on this, just as I did with the US store while living over there.

still no comment from Apple about the opening of iTMS in Australia

Of course, it would be some consolation if the Kazaa decision might speed things along with the Australian iTunes Music Store, but I think that is extremely wishful thinking.

Apple Australia yesterday refused to comment on a launch date for its iTunes music store, which would allow the legion of Australians who own iPods to legally purchase songs, rather than rip, burn and swap.
[Kristy Needham, Music industry banks on opening of online store, Sydney Morning Herald (7 September 2005)]

still no iTunes Music Store in Australia - a casualty of squabbling between Apple and Sony

[7 September 2005: This post has been followed up]
[15 May 2006: The portion about Australian intellectual property law has been followed up]

An Australian iTunes Music Store (iTMS) was supposed to open in May 2005. This unexpectedly fell through. At the time, there were rumours in Slashdot that one major record company (possibly Sony) was the cause of this delay. Three months later, there is still no iTMS in Australia and there is more confirmation that Sony is the company which has been stone-walling in negotiations with Apple over licensing rates. Joshua Gliddon, "Burning issue", Bulletin (7 June 2005).

In Today's Australian Financial Review there was another article about this, "Apple's turn to bite the download bullet" (9 August 2005). I'm not linking to it, because the AFR has a nasty pay-per-view system. The gist of this article was that the Australian iTMS store has become collateral damage in the larger competition between Sony and Apple. Although Sony did not block the original iTMS in North America, or its other expansions, this time it is putting its foot down and insisting that Apple give some ground over licensing rates and access to Apple's FairPlay DRM system. The Australian market isn't that vital to Apple, and it's not going to make these concessions to Sony, and if that holds up the Australian iTMS, so be it. At this rate, it's possible New Zealand will have its iTMS before Australia. Good on them too (my Mum's from NZ, so I have major respect for the country and its people).

Meanwhile, because of an absurdity in Australian copyright law, there is still no legal way of using an iPod in Australia - unless your iPod is filled with music which you have yourself created. So I'm a law-breaker if I buy a CD and format-shift by ripping the music onto my iPod. So are two other Australian bloggers whom I know (I promise not to turn you in, F & S), so are the dozens of people I see everyday in Sydney with some sort of iPod, whether it's a big one or a mini or a shuffle. We're all law-breakers on this issue, even the lawyers. I'm waiting for the day when police will stop me in Martin Place, "Oi, you with those white earphones, what do you think you're up to?"

screenshots

I just added some screenshots to my last iPod post. Better late than never. It wasn't that painful, so I expect to do more of this in the future.

an iPod playlist to imprint the present and remember the past

[28/7/05 update: I've just added some screenshots of these playlists]

Maybe it's the librarian in me, but I find something enjoyable about organizing iTunes playlists for my iPod.

I have playlists for all sorts of things: driving (some music just does not work in the car), doing the dishes on a mellow evening, cleaning, exercising, good mood music for company (pleasant, but not too demanding or intrusive) and music that usually helps me get to sleep.

But nothing is perfect and there are few things about the iPod which can create a less than perfect music experience.

Firstly, if I am always listening to music for particular moods or circumstances, when I am going to listen and new music and how is that music going to imprint on my present circumstances? By imprinting, I mean when a particular piece of music becomes associated with a particular time/place/event/person in one's life. This isn't always a pleasant thing. Björk's Medúlla makes me recall my time working at Vodafone (not exactly pleasant for me) and reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (which is just plain weird). That said, I still think the association of songs in this way provides a helpful musical map to our lives, and that using an iPod can severely dilute this efffect.

The other problem, kind of touched on in my previous iPod playlist post, that it is so easy for good music to buried and lost in an iPod.

Naturally, I have found one answer to these two problems by creating a new kind of playlist. This is a hybrid smart list, containing two other smart playlists. The best thing is that it's self-updating and requires very little maintenance.

Ingredient 1: Smart playlist of recently added tracks. This is simple, choose "Date Added" in the last 3 months - or whichever period you like, it could also be a number of days or weeks. Make sure that the Live Updating box is checked, so that new things are automatically captured and the old ones will drop off.

Ingredient 2: Smart playlist containing good songs which aren't played very often. The first step here is to specify "My rating" as greater than 2 or 3 stars (depending on how picky you want to be). Of course you need to have most of your music rated for this to work effectively. One easy way of doing this is to make an Unrated playlist, containing only the unrated songs - so that you can rate them when you're ever in the mood. The second step is that this must be a limited playlist. For me it's limited to the 25 least often played songs. You might need to tinker with this number at some point to capture the ratio between old and new music which works best for you. Make sure that this list is also live updating.

Ingredient 3: Another smart playlist which combines the contents of the first two lists. At the top of the window, if you'll need to make sure that you choose "Match any of the following conditions", which is basically a boolean OR. Then for those conditions, choose "Playlist" is - and select the other two playlists, i.e. new stuff and good but less played.

At the moment at least, this is my new favourite list. It's not going to replace the others, because there'll always be times when I'll prefer a mood/situation specific playlist. But this hybrid list is a good one to play when I'm not too sure what I want.

the iPod zombie trance

I am an iPod zombie too. This Times of London article points out some of the disadvantages of people wearing iPods – both on an individual level and on a group level.

I concede these. There are days when I’ve forgotten to bring it along or recharge the batteries, and I am amazed sometimes by how much interesting background noise there is to hear. Birds, leaves rustling, snatches of conversation on the footpath, bus or train.

On the other hand, sometimes there aren’t any interesting or appealing ambient sounds. Sometimes it’s just the white noise of traffic.

I definitely use the iPod more in Sydney than I ever did in Hobart. Why is it more of a big city thing? Is it peer pressure, being more reliant on public transport, the busier and more stressful lifestyle?

Listening to music is an escape from the drudgery of the world. After a long busy day in the office, and faced with a grueling commute – it is nice to simply tune out and almost be somewhere else.

Yes, I can see why it isn’t a good thing to have a society where everybody is enclosed in their own personal musical cocoon. On the other hand, this is also a reaction to other things going on in society. If the people who are soliciting donations for charities, selling credit cards or just begging are going to be more upfront about interrupting me – when this isn’t welcome – then I am grateful for anything which makes this more difficult. Acting as if I am in an iPod trance is one way of shielding myself from this.

It’s possible that iPods and other mp3 players are creating a world where people are unaccustomed to silence and where abundance of music is taken for granted as just a background.

It doesn’t have to be like this. It’s also possible that the option of having constant music will help us appreciate deliberate silence.

Zen and the art of creating iTunes playlists

Please excuse this frivolous post and the slightly misleading title.

I have found that it is very easy to get into a rut with what I’m listening to on iTunes. When it is so easy to play only my most favourite songs or my most played songs, that’s often what I listen to. It’s not a good idea to listen to only favourites for a lengthy period of time – it means that I get bored of these great songs and take them for granted

One solution is to sometimes play only the songs that I’ve rated 3 or 4. The problem is that I haven’t rated systematically rated my entire collection. I do this more on a ad hoc basis, otherwise it would be a huge chore. I never rate a new CD until I’ve had it for at least a month, except for those tracks which really leap out as being particularly good or bad.

Here’s one solution which cures this sort of ennui. Morgan’s eclectic sampler playlist.

I use the word sampler in its traditional sense, that this playlist will give a reminder of the breadth of your collection, remind you of the sorts of things which you have.

This playlist has two main guidelines:
1. The idea is to choose only one track from each album. Each album’s representative should ideally be your second or third favourite track from that album.
2. Never choose your favourite tracks – then this playlist would become a just another favourites variation.

Of course, rules are made to be broken. Maybe you’d like to slightly over-represent newer albums, so you can get to know them better. Sometimes you might choose not to represent one-track wonders at all, if you really regret that one track you purchased from that album and don’t view it as representative at all.

The downside is that this playlist takes a bit of work, especially for selecting the second and third-best tracks of albums you haven’t listened to in a while. But that work can itself be enjoyable and illuminating about your collection and how you yourself have changed since adding particular albums.

The other thing is that this playlist is meant to help you escape from your iTunes ruts, don’t let it become a new rut in itself. If it’s a short list, don’t listen to it for more than a few days at once. Even if it’s a really long list, it will have definitely served its purpose after a week. Then leave it for a while and move on, hopefully to some tracks which the eclectic sampler playlist inspired you to rediscover.

first impressions of Office 2004 for Mac - get it for the Project Center!

I have mentioned before (in a post which might have been accidentally deleted) that although I am very much into Macs, I don’t instinctively hate all things Microsoft.

This doesn’t mean that I particularly like Microsoft. I use Windows XP at work (I am contemptuously familiar with that operating system) and Panther at home, and there is absolutely no comparison between the two. XP doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Panther. Moreover I despise the way Microsoft won the browser war, and then once it had the most popular browser, it proceeded to neglect it so that it is now the most atrophied browser that is also the most popular browser.

All that said, once in a while Microsoft makes some decent software and it deserves credit when this happens.

I am referring to Office 2004 (the newest version for the Mac).

using the shift key to rip certain copy-protected CDs

Today I had my first experience of a seriously copy-protected CD, Radiohead's Hail to the Thief, released by EMI. I didn't have much luck ripping it onto my Mac - I ended up having to force quit out of iTunes. Apparently there are a number of different copy-protection methods. One method can be circumvented with a magic marker. I didn't think that this method would work on this particular CD, so I looked for other methods. Then I saw this reference to hold down the shift key on a Windows computer for 5 seconds after inserting the CD. This stopped the CD from automatically launching the program which would interfere with the copy protection. I then copied the CD with iTunes, and soon I'll have it in my iPod.

As I've written before, I believe that creators should be fairly compensated for their work, but that copy-protection technology goes way too far, and I have no moral qualms about circumventing it. I've never been interested in downloading music from file-sharing sites. The only thing which would tempt me would be if I wasn't able to rip a CD which I had lawfully purchased. Then I would feel entitled to download an illicit copy.

When will the record companies realize that people like to listen to music on their computers and mp3 players, and it is manifestly unfair to prevent this from happening? It is simply such a stupid thing to do - piss off your paying customers and drive them into supporting your real target, the file-traders.

I'm about to really start ranting, so instead I'll link this detailed explanation of how the shift method works.

connecting to BigPond ADSL on Mac OS 10.3 + bandwidth hogs

I wrote earlier about my difficulties with getting iBook connected with Telstra's BigPond ADSL service. Well, it turned out that Telstra don't support Macs running on OS 10.3 (Panther). Don't ask me why. I was quite miffed when I noticed this in the fine print. Information like that should be in big bold letters under the Mac requirements. Well I'm happy to say it is possible to connect to BigPond ADSL on a Mac with Panther. It was actually quite easy. So easy that I could have been saved a lot of frustration if only Telstra had bothered to slip in a piece of paper with a few sentences giving some direction to Panther users.

This was something I worked out substantially on my own. I called the Telstra technical support this afternoon. I got the usual line that they don't officially support Panther, but the guy knew that it was possible to connect with it, but he wasn't sure how.

That wasn't at all helpful, but unless the guy was totally lying, it was good to know that it was somehow possible. Of course there wasn't anything on the BigPond website about this. So I looked further afield and found this helpful discussion thread. This gave me the information which I needed to try a different strategy, which actually worked! I went into System Preferences / Network and decided to try the "Assist Me" button for the hell of it, and that did the trick. So now I can return to using my iBook for everything.

Now my dilemma is, shall I stick with Bloglines (which I have developed a liking for), or go back to NetNewsWire (which I also like)?

While I'm talking about Australian broadband internet services, I have got to mention one huge difference between the Australian and American pricing models. In Australia, they really punish bandwidth hogs. All but the most expensive plans have a monthly download/upload allowance. The most basic plans start give you 200 MB to last an entire month. If you go over this allowance, one or both of these things will happen: you'll be charged for each MB over the limit; your connection speed is curtailed so that it's hardly any better than dialup.

From my observations, a 200 MB plan will work for somebody who never surfs the web for more than an hour a day (looking primarily at text), and who never goes to graphics intensive sites, never downloads or streams music or videos and never downloads applications (except maybe the absolute necessary patches and updates, if there aren't too many in that month). And MMORPGs like Lineage, EverQuest and Shadowbane are totally verboten.

I admit, I have been spoilt by my experience in the US, where there are no monthly download allowances. Those would never fly over there! Although I recall reading something about American ISPs are starting to worry about bandwidth hogs.

And it isn't fair when the person who is downloading pirated versions of Buffy season six (6 DVDs worth) and other movies is paying the same monthly charge as the person who just looks at the news, checks her email and does some shopping.

In theory, I can accept the idea of download-based pricing. But it's still a pain. Would it make a difference if they just sold it a different way, such as providing discounts and incentives for lower usage? Who knows. It's probably not so much of an issue in Australia, because most people here have never known anything different.

first glance at Opera 7.50

[See this follow up post about Mac browsers]

Opera 7.50 has recently been released. For the first time, Opera for Mac is no longer a version behind the Windows version. Opera 7.50 is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Of  course, Mac users upgrading from Opera 6 will notice more changes than Windows users upgrading from Opera 7.

Opera is still a small download, compared with the other major browsers. I like to use Opera for extended browsing / searching, because it has all sorts of handy short cuts which make browsing more efficient. Things like the z and x short-cuts for the back and forward buttons. Pressing F8 to be tab directly to the address bar, and then being able to go directly into a Google search by typing something like‘g MT “public relations” debacle’. I also like having nick-names for  bookmarks, so instead of using my mouse to click on my LiveJournal bookmark, I can just press F8 and type in my bookmark’s nick-name, “lj” and be there. I like a browser which saves me key-strokes and mouse usage.

It can also be really helpful to be able to continue browsing from your previous session, and being able to undo closing a browsing window.

Of course,  these were all things available in previous versions of Opera, so why upgrade to 7.50? Mac users will appreciate the magic wand for remembering passwords and having access to the full range of skins. The user interface looks more efficient and takes up less space on the screen.

One of the big innovations in Opera 7.50 is that it contains a news aggregator. This is a great idea and will probably be taken up by other browsers. Unfortunately, I found the results to be patchy. In the Windows version of Opera 7.50, I experienced difficulties reading my subscriptions. For some reason, the Mac version worked better. If you experiment with Opera’s news reader, I would highly recommend learning the keyboard shortcuts for marking items as read. The Opera news reader is very basic when compared with software like Net NewsWire (even the Lite version), but it’s still a notable first attempt at combining a browser and news reader.

My other gripe about is that Opera 7.50 is that it now only supports search shortcuts for Google. The previous version would support some of the other search engines like AlltheWeb and Teoma. Even though Google is probably at the height of its ascendancy, the other search engines are still relevant if you want to be thorough.

Opera is ad-supported for people who aren’t able or interested in paying for it (there is an upgrade discount for people who’ve registered previous versions of Opera). The good news is that now the ad window is a lot smaller and less intrusive than in previous versions.

Opera continues to be an innovative and competent browser. Sometimes there can be hassles with using a browser with such a miniscule market share, when too many web designers are only concerned with supporting IE for Windows. Opera’s particular niche is that it’s a power-user’s browser. Its extra features won’t be helpful to people who lack the time or interest to explore and play around with them.

iPod not being recognized after the iTunes 4.5 update

I am one of the many people who has experienced this problem after upgrading to iTunes 4.5. I have a 20 GB iPod which I bought at the Apple store in the Mall of America in January. There is a fix to this solution and it has worked for me. Go to Apple's web site, choose the Support tab, then choose the Discussions sub-tab, select the iPod product forum, then select the [regular] iPod, and then the Usage folder. The posting is currently second from the top and is called "iPod doesn't appear in Updater or iTunes in Mac OS X". The instructions were fairly straightforward, at least for Panther users.

Ultima III and Ultima IV

Why are retro classics like the early Ultima games popular? Is it just nostalgia - adults pining for what they enjoyed in childhood/adolescence? Is it because mobile phones, PDAs and mp3 players offer a similar a similar gaming environment to the Apple ][, Commodore 64 and TRS-80? Could it be that these some of early games compensated for their technological limits by having better gameplay? Or has this renaissance been caused by the strengthening of the open source movement?

If you're curious, try Lairware's remake of Ultima III (this particular version is for the Mac only). It's shareware. Registering it for $15 will let you finish the game, but you can waste days on this game before you get to that point. It's very polished.

There's also xu4, a freeware version of Ultima IV for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows and other platforms. Ultima IV is a bigger and better game than Ultima III, one of the best games of all time, imho. xu4 is not yet playable to the end, but they're getting there. The personality quiz at the beginning of the game is reason enough to give it a try.

There are a lot more resources on retro-gaming, even other new versions of these games. Not to mention all the sites about running emulators of old operating systems on modern ones.

region free DVD viewing

As I mentioned earlier, I'm returning to Australia on February 1. I have my tickets, I'm now in the process of working out what things I should take with me, and which things I should sell, give away or throw out. I was thinking that I might as well give away my small DVD collection, because it was going to be too difficult for me to view them in Australia, thanks to DVD region encoding (the link is a good summary - albeit slightly biased in favour of regioning). It is so frustrating that a technological solution is deliberately blocked like this.

I've decided that I will bring US DVDs with me in the hope that I'll eventually get a Region-free DVD player in Australia, or I'll find region-switching software for my iBooks's DVD player that will work, that will at least set my iBook's region-switching-counter back to zero.

Safari, Opera and Explorer

[See this follow up post about Mac browsers]

It’s a chicken or the egg type question – did Safari come about because Microsoft was not working on new versions of IE for Mac, or did Microsoft stop working on IE for Mac because Apple started competing with Safari?

When Safari first came out, I was annoyed. First of all, it had that tiresome brushed metal interface (although I’ve since found out that this can be removed with Metalifizer). Secondly, it made me concerned the other Mac browsers, such as Opera, OmniWeb and Camino wouldn’t be able to compete. Although I like all the software which Apple throws in with its computers, I want there to be a viable market for third party software developers for the Mac.

I’ve since come to like Safari. I think that it’s arguably the best free browser for any operating system. It’s very fast – both to load and for browsing. It has tabs and it renders pages very nicely.

Overall, I still prefer Opera 6 for Mac for the following reasons.
I already paid for it, so might as well get my money’s worth
I really, really like some of Opera’s time-saving shortcuts: how you can use the “z” and “x” keys as backwards & forwards buttons; how you select the location bar by just pressing F8 (in this way, it’s much better than Safari, which makes you drag over the whole URL or press Command-L); how bookmarks can be given brief nicknames which retrieve the bookmarked site when entered into the location bar; full screen browsing is easily turned on or off with F11.

Opera’s not without its problem. It takes more time to load than Safari – which I can forgive because Safari’s got an innate advantage in this area. The most two severe problems are that less pages seem work in Opera than Safari and that it is more prone to crash than Safari. These are major problems, and if they continue to get worse, I will reluctantly have to switch to Safari.

Safari and internet banking sites

Macintouch has had some interesting postings concerning the fall out from Microsoft’s decision to discontinue developing IE for Mac. There is concern because some sites, notably online brokerages internet banking sites, only work with IE. People are worried that if IE for Mac atrophies, Mac users will be shut out of many sites because so many lazy web developers design only for IE.

I think that there is a little bit of panic occurring with this issue. There are already sites which only work well with IE 6.x for Windows, not IE 5.2 for Mac. By the way, my credit union’s internet banking and online bill paying works well with just about any web browser. If the big, mean banks and brokerage firms are being troglodytes about only supporting IE, I say that Mac users should take their business elsewhere – especially to credit unions which have lower fees and are usually more responsive to their customers.

Now that Microsoft has won the first browser war, it has little incentive to develop IE for any platform. So their announcement about discontinuing upgrading IE 5.2 for Mac comes at the same time that IE 6.x for Windows also goes onto the back-burner, at least until Longhorn is developed.