(the paint was still a bit wet when this picture was taken, it looks even better in real life :D)

This release contains:

• Php 5.2.13
• Apache 2.2.15
• PhpMyAdmin 3.3.1-rc1
• MySQL 5.1.44

So things sound fairly bad. They even told another user “The current functionality is limited to browsing and mail. We will keep you posted as things improve“… just minutes before they posted this:

That’s right, amidst country-wide internet failure, incredibly slow speeds and connection problems, MWeb decided to be about a month behind anyone who’s watched a YouTube video or been on the internet since the World Cup started and tell everyone about the soccer ball icon that adds Vuvuzela noise to the video you’re watching. That’s right everyone, go forth and watch YouTube videos with an annoying sound playing while everyone else struggles just to connect to anything. Great logic there MWeb, well done.

UPDATE: MWeb just posted this – fail.

Now if you’re smart, like me, you’ll head over to your privacy settings and make sure your account’s locked tight – good for you, but have you considered what information your friends are sharing about you? That’s right… I’m talking about “What your friends can share about you through applications and websites” – wait, what… your friends can share your information, with a 3rd party site you have never even visited? Why the HELL is that okay? Sure, it means when you do eventually decide to visit said site that it already knows who you and all of your friends are. In Russia you don’t enter your information into websites, they enter you. When last did you willingly give a website a list of all of your friends, anyway?

As if that isn’t enough, not long ago there was something called “Facebook Beacon” which basically allowed ebay to tell Facebook when you purchased stuff and what it was. Yes, that’s right, now Facebook knows your shopping habbits too. Luckily a lawsuit shut it down – but do you really think they deleted all the data they’d collected? Did you even know this kind of data was being collected about you (without your permission)?

The problem is simple… Mark Zuckerberg (the creator of Facebook) doesn’t believe in “privacy”, so he’s going to keep pushing towards an “open” web, whether you like it or not. So what’s the answer? Well “if you don’t like it, leave” – which is what I’m going to do. I may not “deactivate” or “delete” my account, but I’m certainly not going to leave a shred of personal information about me in it – they can’t be trusted.

Oh, and then there’s this list of  Privacy Concerns, oh and that “bug” a little while ago that let other people read your chats and see your pending invites.

TL;DR version: not only do Facebook store and share all of your information with 3rd parties, they also used to collect information on you from 3rd parties (such as ebay), and they’re constantly moving towards making more of your information “public”.

People only have 140 characters to say what they want to say – someone’s day was bad, that’s probably as much as you’ll hear about it. Someone did something cool, you’ll probably hear what they did without the life-story of where they went, how they got there, who they bumped into, etc. Short and to the point.

2. Customer Service

Where else can you send a wish/request/complaint into the world and get a response back within 24 hours:

@hypn wishes there was a cheaper way to ship stuff from HongKong to ZA – already tried HongKong Post, DHL and UPS. Any other suggestions? :|  11:20 PM Apr 19th via web

@FedExEmily @hypn Good Morning. Would you like for a representative to contact you on rates from Hong Kong to ZA? about 20 hours ago via web

As it turns out I no longer need to ship stuff from Hong Kong to South Africa, but think about that for a second… a company picked up on a need I had “tweeted” – even though it didn’t mention them – and contacted me to find me a solution. That’s brilliant marketing if you ask me.

There was also an incident recently where I downloaded Nokia OVI Maps, which is meant to be “free” , which kept telling me that my license had expired. I send out a “tweet” to @Nokia complaining about this, and they got a local PR consultant to contact me to resolve the issue.

No phone calls, no being on hold, not menu prompts to try and get through to get to an operator, no have to explain your problem over and over again… you tweet, and (good) companies respond. Now if only my bank had a @Rbjacobs (from FNB) doing what he does… I’m opening an account with FNB in the next month or two. Customer service has evolved, has your business’s?

3. News

Why bother paging through your morning paper, or having to scroll through pages of ads and useless information to find the day’s news, when you could just get it through Twitter – often the news breaks there before it’s picked up by the major news sites (granted, it might be a bit inaccurate if not completely false). A lot of the bigger news sites even post the headlines on Twitter, eg: BBC’s Breaking News.

There’s also “trending topics“, a great way to find out what people are talking about around the world. When 9/11 happened a friend of mine was in an “IRC channel” (chat room) with someone in the military or something, who was relaying information to them as stuff was happening. I’d imagine if Twitter had been around then, people would’ve been “tweeting” from inside the buildings – far more information than a reporter would ever be able to get – and who knows how valuable that information could be in saving people or knowing what risks still exist.

4. Finding people

By searching for a few keywords you can easily find like minded people, or even people stuck in a situation – for example, at the time of writing this the volcano in Iceland has tourists around the world stranded… Twitter’s advanced search page lets you limit search results to a certain distance from you, so you could (in theory) quite easily find people stranded at your nearest airport, in need of accommodation… and hopefully help them out :)

5. Synchronizing to Facebook (and Google Buzz)

There’s a Facebook app called “Selective Tweets” which is able to read in your “tweets” on Twitter that have a keyword (default is “#fb”) and set them as your Facebook status. There is also an official (I believe) Twitter app for Facebook that “tweets” your Facebook statuses… personally I prefer to have Twitter update to Facebook. There’s also Google Buzz, which I don’t really use *cough* twitter clone *cough, that’s able to “buzz”(?) your “tweets” from Twitter – though it tends to be somewhat delayed. Just one post to update 3 “social networks” – doesn’t get much easier than that :)

Can’t they even afford to pay for their bulk mailing software? (note the “Trial Version — for evaluation purposes only)

I’m going to wait and see if they bill me at the end of the month, and then contact their COE… I might even direct him to this blog ;)

So I decided to take an account with another ISP as I needed internet access for December (which was only a few days away). On the 2nd of Decemember 2009 I received an e-mail from Screamer (subject “Your acocunt details” – great spelling), with my ADSL account details.

I spent the next few days trying to explain to them I hadn’t “confirmed the process of activation of my application” (as per the first image), and hadn’t given them authorization (neither verbally, nor forms) to debit my account, and didn’t want the account with them anyway as I’d had to go to another ISP because I didn’t know how long it would take until they did have accounts available. After speaking to a woman named Michelle, and sending her an e-mail confirming our telephonic discussion, I assumed the matter was resolved and left it at that.

On the 31st of December 2009 two debit orders went off, from Screamer, both deducting R230 (the amount of the account I’d wanted to sign up for)… do they bill all of their clients double the amount they advertise on their site? Yesterday I phoned them and spoke to 3 different people about having the money refunded and my “account” cancelled – no-one was really able to help me, and I was told someone would get back to me (I’m still waiting, 24+ hours later). This morning I went in to the bank and had them reverse both transactions, and block Screamer from taking any more money out my account for the next 6 months – hopefully that will get the message across to them.

So my advice – stay as far away from them as possible.

Now for the moral question… seeing as I have the account details for 10gb Screamer ADSL account, and they’re so useless and have cost me multiple phone calls, time at the bank, and bank fees getting their debits reversed… do I use the account? ;)

If you’d like to have your say on Facebook:
Their “fan” page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Screamer-Telecoms/136012960976

First up we have a travel advertisement board, with Avast anti virus (or is it anti spyware?) reporting a trojan. Makes you wonder who installed it (the path is in “Program Files”), or what this computer’s doing with an internet connection:

Next up we have Ster Kinekor with good old “Active Desktop Recovery” on one of their self-help terminals. I would’ve loved to watch someone who can barely use these machines when they’re working try and figure this out:

The catch is it’s a raw disk image intended to be written to, and booted from,  a flash drive… making it a little tricky to use in VirtualBox as it doesn’t support booting from USB drives. So here’s a VirtualBox disk image of hexxeh’s Chrome Os Diet… just download, unzip (well, “unrar” technically) and start it up :)

Thanks for your work hexxeh!

(The default username and password are both “facepunch” – speaking of which, check out http://www.facepunch.com which I believe hexxeh is involved with)

My download mirror: ChromeOS-Diet.tar.gz (290mb)

Download the VirtualBox image here: ChromiumOSvdi.rar (290mb – extracts to 800mb)

Features:
* start each level with 9999 sun
* get  9999 sun from each sun
* build for free (must have enough sun to build the plant though)
* instant cool-down after building a plant
* invincible plants (don’t take damage)
* all plants start cooled-down at the beginning of a level
* one shot kills zombies (cone/helmet/etc zombies take 2 shots)
* start a level even if you haven’t filled your plant slots

Hacks can be enabled/disabled individually, or all at once.

Download: Hypn’s Plants VS Zombies Trainer.zip (4kb)

Plants VS Zombies official site