Comments for Bill Rowell

Comment on Netflix Annoyances – Can’t Gift DVD Subscriptions by Bill

Bill — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:07:14 +0000

Same story here, but a nice fellow on the phone at Netflix assured me that not only are the gift amounts a cash value to be used on any plan offered, but that a DVD-only option would be available to my parents upon redemption of the gift. I’m 85% sure that one or both will turn out to be untrue. These guys are on crack.

Comment on Netflix Annoyances – Can’t Gift DVD Subscriptions by Jim

Jim — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 03:01:51 +0000

It’s funny, I ran into the exact same problem as you. I too fled with the masses several months ago, but my stepmother loves the DVD service. When I first gave her the year long subscription as a gift a few years ago, I was quite irked that she had to setup an account with her credit card info etc. just to even get the service started. Netflix had already been paid for a year upfront. I wanted to just keep giving her a year subscription every year, but I was forced to just write her a check to cover the cost since they started billing her after the year was up. It was annoying, but I got over it. This year, I couldn’t even get the price of the DVD service without calling Netflix. I am completely amazed that for a company who’s entire business model is run from a website does not have the sense to include options to buy ALL of their products from the website, or at the very least offer the pricing. The streaming service was the only thing available. I am flabbergasted at how this company who had such a bold influence on the industry has allowed themselves to be so reckless and cocky with their customers. Reed Hastings’ widely publicized pay-cut was not enough, he is still grossly overpaid for allowing this company to continue to drive right into the ground. If my stepmother didn’t love the service (that they are intent on killing off sooner than later) so much, they would’ve just as easily lost this portion of my business as well.
The market is screaming for a competitor to take these guys down completely.

Comment on GMail Usability Issue – Spam/Delete Buttons by Lisa

Lisa — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:55:10 +0000

Apparently this was not changed. Granted it’s free to use but what good is it if they keep changing it without asking first and not fixing what is annoying?

Comment on Linksys WRT54G as a Wireless Repeater Using dd-wrt by Bill

Bill — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:15:11 +0000

Hey Sebastian,

I didn’t try to use the wired ports after I switched it over. My guess is you probably could use them. Won’t break anything to try though.

-Bill

Comment on Building an Ecometry Shipping Station by Bill

Bill — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:13:53 +0000

Hi Jerry,

First, let me say I haven’t used Ecometry in a couple of years and don’t have anything set up here to check for you. However, I think we used the rs232 connections to set up our scales. Typical issues with the scale have to do with setting the COM properly in Windows. Have you checked your settings with what I have listed above? Also, there might be a scale setting you’d need to change to be sure its communicating with Windows with the proper settings. I vaguely recall having to change something there, but I can’t remember for sure.

Comment on Building an Ecometry Shipping Station by Jerry

Jerry — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:08:39 +0000

First let’s start with we are on Ecometry – the MPE version.

Our shipping station has died and I’m not being very successful trying to build one. FedEx has given us a Mettler Toledo PS60 scale but it has either a usb connection or rs232. How do I put this scale on the PC – and how do I configure Ecometry to see the scale? We use reflections as out terminal emulator. thanks in advance for an7y assistance you can give me.

Comment on Linksys WRT54G as a Wireless Repeater Using dd-wrt by Sebastian Schaer

Sebastian Schaer — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:03:51 +0000

Hi Bill,

good to know that it works. One question I wonder about (before trying to dd-wrt my old WRT54G and obviously being not very knowledgeable in networking) is whether I can still use the ethernet ports for wired connections once the router runs in repeater mode?

Do you have any knowledge/experience about that?

Thanks,

Sebastian

Comment on GMail Usability Issue – Spam/Delete Buttons by Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 02:55:32 +0000

I customize the gmail interface with firefox but I haven’t moved the spam/delete buttons yet. They fold-up and group all kinds of *frequent* actions that you DON’T want them to group, then there’s an entire inch of wasted screen space near the top with “Gmail Calendar Documents Photos Reader Web more” at the top which I never use, and above and below the gmail logo / search line all of which could be grouped or hidden until you want it – unless of course your company is all about marketing not usability. Doesn’t google have enough money? Can’t they back-off the marketing-only-UI-push for awhile? Since when is user customization bad – you code a page called Advanced UI Customization and place a line at the top that says don’t change this unless you know what you’re doing. They’ve spent a million person-hours over the past 10 years to make the UI “fancy” and more annoying every 14 months, but zero work on allowing the user to generously customize the look and feel. Why is user UI customization a bad thing? Are you and google afraid that idiot users are going to get the UI in a confused state? If THAT’S possible then the customization functionality (that doesn’t yet exist) wasn’t designed right. Very few UI options and they turn all their new annoyances on by default otherwise no-one would use them.

Comment on Commission Junction Customer Support Fail by A.F.

A.F. — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:30:31 +0000

I had the exact same problem as of 10 minutes ago. But I took the extra step of calling customer support http://www.cj.com/company/contact-us , 800-761-1072, and they restored my account in the matter of seconds. It’s up and running now.

Comment on Nextopia Search Integration by CSB

CSB — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 06:18:44 +0000

EasyAsk has SaaS and perpetual pricing. SaaS starts at about $600/mo based on SKU count.