Great Customer Service from Snapfish

My wife signed up for Snapfish some time ago, originally during their partnership with Earthlink, and has always been fond of it. The only problem has been their Mac support was a bit behind Internet Explorer. Yeah, not much of a surprise…

Last week we got an email offering a free photo album, expect the software to build a photo album is Windows only. So we sent them an email saying “thanks for the offer, but we can’t use it”.

After just a few days, they replied with 30 free prints and free shipping.

That’s not easy. Promotions like that are usually handled by Marketing teams and datamining and big email campaigns.

To get a response beyond “sorry” was a real surprise, and looks to me that they have a motivated team with the freedom to Make the Call–a focus on customer satisfaction not rigid policy. We’ll be their customer for a long time I think.

Second Life in AJAX

And open-sourced. Pretty cool, if only as an experiment:http://blog.katharineberry.co.uk/category/ajaxlife/And the developer? She’s a teenager. Outstanding.

Cuz the Patriot Act isn’t strong enough

From TPM:

In a little-noticed executive order issued on Tuesday, President Bush directed the Treasury Department to block the U.S.-based financial assets of anyone deemed to have threatened “the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq” or who “undermin(e) efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq.”

It’s not going to stop, is it?

Cool music search and play

Listening Post–one of Wired’s million blogs–writes about SeeqPod. Using your browser (including for your mobile), you search for songs or artists and SeeqPod searches the net for MP3s:

…search for any artist and play their songs within seconds, for free. SeeqPod doesn’t transcode the music as it streams, so you hear it in its original form as scraped from MP3 blogs, personal web pages, and anywhere else on the internet that hosts MP3s.

Very cool.

Mac gamers* rejoice

From MacMinute:

Gears of War, UT 3 for Mac confirmed
July 16, 2007 – 12:17 EDT According to a report on Inside Mac Games today, Epic Game’s VP Mark Rein announced “that a Mac version of Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3 are heading to the platform. Rein enthusiastically announces in the video, ‘And don’t forget, we’re also doing Macintosh. Yes, Gears is coming to the Mac and so is UT.’” Further information is available from IMG.

After playing Gears on Mr. Dahlen’s 360, I gotta say I loved it. I sucked at it, but I really enjoyed it. What got me was the subtly of combat. You don’t run in full steam with rocket launchers akimbo. You use speed, cover, and battlefield awareness to protect yourself and take out your opponent. Can’t wait.

And the Unreal franchise has never disappointed me; UT has provided some of my fondest multiplayer memories. Unreal 2 was more than my POS PC could handle, and crashed it mercilessly, but what I got to play I thoroughly enjoyed. Once I get Parallels 3 running, I’ll have to install Unreal 2 and give it another go.

* No, “Mac Gamer” is not an oxymoron, thank you very much. Granted, I can’t play HL2 and that pisses me off. Well, until now anyway.

Let’s get sci-fi

Just a thought as I was reading this in the New York Times:

The administration, [Former Surgeon General Richard H.] Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?’ ” Dr. Carmona said.

The Special Olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people, and the Kennedys have long been deeply involved in it.

So the scenario is: You go back in time to Inauguration Day, 2001, and tell your former self about Bush administration history, 2001-2007. Knowing that, wouldn’t your 2001 self support impeachment as a matter of duty and policy, overriding any potential political implications?

Ubuntu on PS3

I don’t think it’s taking full advantage of the Cell yet (officially you use PPC builds). Also, I don’t think Linux gets access to all the video processing power either, from some of the comments I read.

But still, for “everyday” use, this could be cool and a sign of good things to come as they continue to make improvements to the Distro. If you start at the beginning of the thread you can really see how it’s evolved.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=298256

I still cannot justify spending money on a PS3 for games alone or games plus movies (even if I had an HDTV).

But a fully fledged computer? Ubuntu is excellent, and getting better all the time. Add the full power of the PS3’s Cell and video processing, and you’d have one hell of a thing.

Best of all, Sony seems to have learned something from the PSP hackers. Namely, LEAVE ‘EM ALONE.

The Leading Democrat on Energy

MoveOn just had a vote to choose the Democratic presidential candidate with the best energy policy, and I voted for Senator Dodd.  There are three video clips per candidate here.

Edwards doesn’t say much of substance, while Clinton and Obama make a big push for cap and trade and carbon auctions, which looks like sweeping crap under the rug. Dodd clearly has the edge here, and it’s been difficult to get media attention for some reason (I’m working on a conspiracy theory), even though he has the best and most aggressive plan, and the plan most applauded by experts.  There are big problems with the empty talk and polluter-friendly half-measures of the other candidates, and I’d like to think Dodd could make headway in this climate. I wish people would talk more about how the front runners are being safe and NOT LEADING. Gravel and Biden aren’t being safe, but one is spewing his own marbles, and the other one is screaming himself hoarse. Richardson is boring the hell out of me, and Kucinich is an alien fruit loop.

Spread the word people, Dodd is the man with the plan, as well as the experience and desire to see it all through.

Itchy Impeachment Finger

I’m on a lot of e-mail lists. I don’t know how I got on some of them, but I don’t care. I don’t respond to many of them, but it’s good to see what everyone on “our side” thinks. Now suddenly, they all seem to be of one mind about impeaching Cheney. We’ve talked about this before; how we believe he deserves it, but it’s easy to question whether it should be done now, with everything else going on. I’m in favor of it out of screaming rage over everything they’ve done, and after no research I believe this kind of shakeup would be good overall and wouldn’t destroy the country, but I’m not pinning any hopes on it or expecting anything from it. I only bring it up because I’m curious if the alignment of e-mail lists points to any more serious thought in the Democratic party? Is this something the Dems aren’t talking about publicly, but using the lists as market testing? True Majority quoted a poll saying that 54% of Americans support impeachment of Cheney, but I never heard of the place. Thoughts?