Excellatronic Communications

Ive updated my Flickr – Multi Group Sender script to include a search box, that lets you quickly search through your group list to find suitable groups to send your image to.

Heres a screenshot of it in action:

Ive also updated the Flickr PM script to display the users real name and location, if they have listed them, when you pop open the mail sending window, also fixed it to work on the all sizes page and all the search pages.

Another script i made an update to was Flickr Inline Forum post editor, it now lets you edit or delete comments below photos without leaving the page you are on.

You can get all these scripts and more at my Flickr Projects and Greasemonkey scripts page

Ive updated my flickr shades greasemonkey script to version 2. The new version of the script lets you customise the colour scheme on the flickr website. Ive added a colour editing screen, where you can select the colours you want to use. You can access the new colour configuration screen via the “Tools/Greasemonkey/UserScript Commands” menu in firefox.

Heres a screen shot of the colour config screen in action:

You can get the updated version of the script here

Dead Pigeon – Roadkill

Originally uploaded by steeev

I saw this dead pigeon in the road, whilst i was on my way to Salzburg’s House of Nature museum. It reminded me a bit of the Austrian flag.

Ive been wondering for a while now, why this site ( http://steeev.freehostia.com ) is no longer appearing in Google search results. In fact it apparently hasnt been in there since December 2007! I know this because I signed up to the Google WebMaster tools site. And they can tell you when your site was last indexed by their robots. Though the annoying thing is theres no way of finding out the reason why they are no longer spidering you.

I tried the google webmaster faqs on the subject, and I also tried asking in the google webmaster group on google groups, but didnt really get any nearer to finding out the cause of or solution to the problem. I searched for quite a while, for a way to actually contact someone at google and ask them what the problem was. I had more or less given up on ever finding out.

Then today, i had a brainwave, I tried a google search, for the text “how can i contact someone at google and find out why my site is not in their index” and found a great resource all about it called “Banned By Google?” There they explain what the reason might be, and how to find out if you are banned. One of the things they said to check for was a faulty robots.txt file, and they have a nifty tool for checking this for you. And this led me to find what could possibly be the cause, it wasnt the robots.txt file that was faulty, the tool told me that it was getting a 302 temporary redirect for that file. So I investigated further, and found out that if i type any random filename on my site, I get a 302 temporary redirect which redirects to a html 404  page that is instead of returning the correct 404 (file not found) status code, its returning 200 (ok)! pretty mad! It seems the site is setup this way by default, pretty crazy isnt it?!

Now I could understand why this might possibly be the cause of why my site is not showing up in the Google index. Well I looked up my hosts faqs on the subject , and they explain how to make the 404 page actually return the correct 404 error code. Now fingers crossed, I might actually get some sweet, sweet google juice once more :)

UPDATE As per the advice at the above mentioned article i sent an email to help@google.com to ask why my site wasnt being indexed, but apparently they dont accept help queries at that address, they sent an automated response saying i need to contact them via http://www.google.com/support/ Blimey Ive tried to find a way of contacting them before via their support system, and it wasnt easy. Anyway luckily, they seem to have updated their webmaster tools site, to include a system for contacting them and asking them to reconsider reindexing your site. So i’ve tried that, and they said it may take up to a week or 2 for them to reply. Fingers crossed my site will be back in google soon.

Ive recently signed up for an account with TrialPay which is a new way to pay for things on the internet. A lot of online companies have started using their payment system for their products. I blogged about them recently here

As an experiment I have uploaded one of my scripts, Flickr Group Pool Admin : Warn and Delete to their secure server, and now you can purchase a copy of the script via their system by clicking here

The great thing about it is, you dont necessarily have to pay anything, in order for me to be compensated, you can just sign up to a free trial of something like video rentals, or a free trial of a website or you can even purchase something entirely unrelated that you need anyway, and get my product thrown in free. The way it works is TrialPay get a fee from their Partner for getting a new customer or making a sale, and they then pass on a cut of that money to me. I think its a great new development on the internet, and it looks like its growing in popularity. If you would like to “show me some love” but dont have any spare cash, why not try buying this script from me via the TrialPay system, that we we both benefit, and you benefit twice, its a win win squared situation :)

Who will be the first to buy my script and show me some love? Its exciting, and I hope the system takes off. Im thinking of putting all my scripts on this system, as not enough people seem to donate for free software, if I put them all on TrialPay, people could still get them for free, but I would get compensated too, for all my hard work.

I updated another couple of my greasemonkey scripts. This time its Flickr Multi Group Sender and Flickr Inline Forum Post Editor.

Ive made them both compatible with the “internationalised” versions of the site. Ive also added a couple of features to the multi group sender. Ive added a little group counter, that counts how many groups you have selected, it sits below the select box. Ive also limited the list of groups that you can send to, to the ones that the picture is not already in. The groups that the image is in already appear dimmed.

You can get the updated versions of the scripts from http://steeev.freehostia.com/flickr/ as usual, enjoy! :)  BTW dont forget if you are a keen user of my scripts, that ive put a lot of time and effort into creating and maintaining them, and i welcome donations via PayPal, if you would like to thank me for my troubles. Ive also got an amazon wishlist, if you fancy buying me something from that :)

BTW ive created a donor list page, to thank all my kind donors so far, you can view the list of lovely kind hearted people who have decided to reward me for my efforts, here.

Cheers! :)

Concrete Baby

Originally uploaded by steeev
A photo of a concrete baby – An Eerie Sculpture Outside St Martin in the Fields Church. It appears to be chiseled out of the rock, the funny thing is you just see a big square slab of rock from the other side, its only when you go behind the rock that you are astonished to see the new born baby sculpture. quite spooky indeed.

I finally got round to updating my Flickr Group Pool Admin : Warn + Delete greasemonkey script, so it works with the latest version of GM and also the latest Firefox.

Ive also updated my FlickrPM script, to include a link to the nifty Flickr Leech, and fixed some minor display bugs.

You can get the updated versions of the scripts here.

Since my recent run in with dodgy customer services at Three UK, ive decided in future dealings with such people, im going to record the calls.

Ive found the built in nokia voice recorder app on my nokia 6680, which you can access via the “office” icon on the phone “desktop” only seems to record a couple of minutes of speech.  So I had a look on the internet and found “Call Recorder Pro” http://www.getjar.com/products/4700/…rNokiaSeries60
which is a java application. Its free for a 30 day trial, and it doesnt seem to have a limit on call length. I will definitely be using something like that in future if i ever have to deal with those slippery snakes in future.

The way it works is basically whenever you receive or make a call, it asks you if you want to record the call. The calls are recorded in the .AMR format and 1 minute of call takes up roughly 1 megabyte of space, so make sure you have enough space on your phone or memory card first. Its a great little application, highly recommended!

A cautionary tale involving a multinational corporation.

It seems customer loyalty and honesty is something that the Three UK phone network dont seem to care about.

I’ve been with 3 for 3 years and as my contract was due for renewal, i decided to see what offers were available to get me to stay with them. After a lot of negotiations, i.e futile calls going through the abysmal 3 Customer Service system, and being switched between different departments, i managed to hammer out a deal, whereby i would get a Nokia N95 refurbished, for £10 a month on an 18 month contract. I realised that I had made a mistake though, when i noticed that they had the Nokia N95 8gb on offer on their website, and having read reports of the poor battery life of the old N95 model, i decided to ring up and see if I could get the N95 8GB instead. After a long chat with the customer service agent, and a consultation with her manager, she agreed that I could have the N95 8GB on the same price plan as had previously been agreed.

Now at the time I didnt realise it, but apparently the word of the 3 Customer service people cannot be trusted. As in the end they just sent me the N95 (old model) refurbished and are now claiming that they never offered to send me the N95 – 8GB. I was shocked when they told me that, as I had asked the CS rep 3 times to confirm that it was the N95 8GB that i was going to get.

After doing some research on the web, I have found that I am not the only person that this kind of backsliding and double dealing has happened to.

The moral of this story is if you are calling three’s Upgrade or Retention department and negotiating a better deal. *ALWAYS*, *ALWAYS*, *ALWAYS* get them to confirm the offer with you in writing first, and also, always *RECORD* the conversation, as they cannot be trusted to tell you the truth. If you dont record the conversation, they will tell you: “oh we have no record of that conversation” sorry, the deal you want is not available. BULLSHIT!

Never trust them. Always get a recording and get the deal in writing before agreeing to anything with them.

Heres some contact names / email addresses and  the telephone number of the 3 headquarters in Glasgow. In case you have a problem with the abysmal 3 customer services team.

Kevin Russell – CEO of Three : kevin.russell@three.co.uk

Media Department (deals with the press and (bad) publicity) media@three.co.uk

Customer Services (dont bother with this one, as they will just tell you to ring 333) customer.services@3mail.com

01628765000 is the phone number of Three UK’s glasgow headquarters. If you ring the number you will be put through to the switchboard. So you have to provide the name of the person you wish to talk to. Here are a few names you can try:
Ian McLuckie (customer service Director)
Simon Kirby (Head of service and customer experience)
Tony Sidhu (Head of Service Delivery)
Justin Bull (Customer Service delivery Manager)

Three staff email address follows a standard format. eg simon.kirby@3mail.com, tony.sidhu@3mail.com

If anyone else has had similar problems with them, please let me know!

In future I will be recording all my conversations with these types of sneaky ****s