Technology

Mibbit – IRC the easy way

IRC is one of the best things that happened in the world of online communications ever. But, it’s a pity that most non-technical users have no idea of its existence. Getting on IRC usually required downloading and installing a client software, and then going through a list of networks, picking a server, a nickname, and finding a channel to connect to. While not exactly rocket science, it was more than enough to seriously decrease the user base.

Via this Web Worker Daily post I learned about a great tool – Mibbit. It is a web-based interface to IRC. It is straight forward, easy to use, and doesn’t require one to know much about IRC. No installation or registration is needed – you can jump straight into it.

In fact, even many technical people who use IRC will find Mibbit useful. It adds some useful pieces of functionality which many traditional IRC clients miss (unless, of course they support plugins). Two things that I was glad to see were Paste Bin support, which is a quick way to send around pieces of text, often with syntax highlight, and editing capabilities; and integrated translations. You can pick the language you want your messages to be translated to, as well as the language you want other people’s messages to be translated to. Of course, the translations are done automatically, so they aren’t of the best quality, but at least you’ll get a slight idea of what those other people are talking about. In case you don’t speak a common language, that is.

I also liked the interface of Mibbit. It is clean, simple, and fast. You can participate in multiple discussions, which will appear as tabs, which you can switch between. Updates are fast and the whole thing feels very much like a desktop application.

Thanks to Web Worker Daily for bringing attention to this service, and, of course, to Mibbit developers for making a useful tool.

P.S.: If you are trying to get a hold of me on IRC, my contact page has all the information that you need.

Twinkle – sudden popularization of Cyprus

There was an sudden boost in searches for Cyprus yesterday. The reason for that was a bug in Twinkle – a Twitter client for iPhone. For some reason, Twinkle was identifying current location wrong for a whole lot of users. Instead of being somewhere in the States, they were said to be Nicosia, Cyprus. That probably felt very surprising for them, especially considering the fact that not many of them knew what or where Nicosia, Cyprus was. Hence, all the searching.

There is a rumor going around that it was the work of Cyprus government, desperately trying to keep tourism levels up. You, of course, should believe whatever your tin foil hat tells you to believe…

Subscribe to PrimeHome channels with remote control

I’ve had PrimeHome for quite some time now. So I don’t know of this feature was there before or if it is one of the recent additions, but it’s pretty cool. Apparently, you can subscribe to additional TV channel packages with just a remote control. No need to call or drive to any of those PrimeTel shops, no need to fill any forms, and, most importantly, no need for any waiting.

Here is how it works. Go to the menu and select the channel that you don’t have but would like to. You’ll see a static PrimeHome screen, with a line at the top saying something like “Press red button to subscribe”. Press the red button on your remote control now. You’ll be asked to enter your PIN and once you do, your STB will reboot and you’ll have the channel enabled. You’re done.

A few things to keep in mind:

You can easily subscribe with remote control, but not unsubscribe. To unsubscribe you’ll need to visit their shop and fill the form. Maybe you can do it over the phone too – I’m not sure, but it’s for sure not as easy as subscribing.
When you subscribe with remote control, you don’t subscribe to a single channel, but a package of channels to which it belongs. Check the list of channels and prices for each package at PrimeHome web site before subscribing.
When you subscribe with remote control, you will be shown a warning that the minimum period for your subscription is two month. I don’t know if the same policy applies when you subscribe through phone or from inside of their office, but it’s worth knowing. If you get yourself an expensive package, you’ll have to pay for at least two month of using it.

That’s about it.

Hope to see more language controls in Google Reader

If you read this blog even for a short while, you probably know that I depend on many Google tools, such Gmail and Google Reader. As a power user, I believe I know pretty much everything these services have to offer. I also know a few things that these services don’t have on offer yet, but which I’d gladly welcomed.

I already mentioned a sharing of interesting items in Google Reader with your contacts. That’s a really nice feature. And you can even control which users you see shared items from. However, one important thing is missing in that functionality – language control.

You see, I don’t have that many friends who are using Google Reader and share items, but even those few that I have speak a total of 7 languages (Russian, English, Greek, French, Ukrainian, Dutch, and German). Not only they speak this languages, but they also share a lot of items in those languages. That is sort of useless, since I only know two languages – Russian and English. These two are enough to provide the common ground for communications with all of my friends.

So, what I would really like to see in Google Reader, is a new setting which would let me filter my friends’ shared items to only those languages that I can understand. I know this can be a bit tricky to implement (how does the system know in which language the shared item is? or, even, what should it do if shared item is in more than one language?), but it would be really helpful functionality. And a huge time saver too, since then I wouldn’t have to go through all those items that I have no understanding off and marking them as read.

Should such a feature appear, I’d like to see it taken to extreme. I should be able to automatically tag or do searches on content in specific language. This will give me a useful tool of comparing hype about the same topic in different language communities.

Microsoft support – a myth or reality?

gapingvoid, a blog well known for cartoons drawn on the back of business cards, has this post about monetizing on open source software – a very old discussion, as we know it. In that post, one IT guy is quoted saying:

“If something goes wrong with Microsoft, I can phone Microsoft up and have it fixed. With Open Source, I have to rely on the community.”

What’s your first thought after reading that? Mine was “Have you ever even called Microsoft support?“. It seems that a lot of people believe in this notion of Microsoft support magically fixing whatever problem they might have with any of the Microsoft product.

The question really is – will they? Myself I never had any experience with Microsoft support, but I know quite a few people who did. Most of them seem to agree that Microsoft support is pretty much like any other technical support service of any other company. Meaning that to get anything good out of it, you have to know how to get through to knowledgeable people and you have to know how to convince them to spend some time with your case. Otherwise, you’ll get into an endless loop of answering machines, checklist questions, and advices like “Please, reboot your computer and call us back“.

I have to say that that makes sense to me. Microsoft is the biggest desktop software vendor. Desktop computer users tend to be the most uninformed and untrained category of users (no offense intended). If even half of them believe in magic of Microsoft support, imagine what Microsoft has to go through to keep their support costs reasonable. If you have a serious problem, you’d probably need to get through all that protection and prove that you know what you are doing and that your case deserves attention. Getting through requires knowledge, experience and patience. How many people of those who believe in Microsoft support actually have the knowledge, experience and patience to get through? I don’t think many do. Am I wrong?
P.S.: By the way, there is an interesting discussion in the comments to that original post.