Don’t Trust the Internet Today
The morning of April 1 is one of my favourite times of the year. I sit down at my desk with my morning beverage and a leg of lamb (breakfast of champions to the mighty lumberjacks of Canada), ready to see what the internet has in store for its denizens.
It’s when all the companies with a sense of humour litter their sites with face articles, jokes and pranks on their userbase for April Fools. It’s the day of the year when you can’t trust anything you read on the internet, and the only thing funnier than the jokes themselves are the people who fall for them.
And the top three runner-ups for Best April Fool Award go to…
I particularly enjoy Google’s April Fools’ jokes, as they put a lot of effort into making them seem like real products and services being launched. Case in point: Their Gmail Motion Beta could have actually been a useful tool, had their demonstration video not been so off the wall and, well, hilarious. The lengths to which they went to integrate the new feature into Gmail made it all the funnier.
Google’s job posting for an “Autocompleter” was another winner, stating that applicants for the position should be able to type at speeds of at least 32,000 words per minute. I sent an email to my colleagues at work telling them that I would be leaving the company to fill this position, and to my delight and surprise, one of them actually fell for it.
I sent this Canon notice to a few of my clients who have Canon copiers in their offices. The new Canon VoiceOver module allows users to scan, print and copy their documents with voice commands. Since the module is still in “learning mode,” it may be necessary for them to repeat their commands several times for them to work. Receiving emails with stories of people standing there, yelling at their copiers, made my day several times over.
My Personal Favourite – Upcoming Features in Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP2
Who says Microsoft doesn’t have a sense of humour? The team responsible for developing the Exchange communications platform published a blog post with details on exciting upcoming features in the next service pack for Exchange 2010. I’ll admit to having been excited to read the article, until realizing a couple paragraphs in that it was an obvious fabrication. But kudos to the Exchange team for a good laugh, and to that one guy in the comments who thought it was real.
Some of the humour here may be lost on those not familiar with running email systems such as Exchange, but here’s an excerpt of some of the great new features they came up with:
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- OWA Automobile Edition: Exchange team and a major US automaker will soon announce OWA integration into new line of cars to maximize end-user productivity. Car windshields are to be replaced with LCDs (who needs windshields anyway?) Additionally, when it’s time for oil change, you will get a reminder popup.
- Twitter-Ready Mail: Exchange 2010 SP2 will enforce a maximum email length of 140 characters to ensure all email is Twitter-ready. If you have more than 140 characters of things to say, you are clearly egotistical and self-centered. To help you save the characters, we will also enforce all email to be in clear text format. An 80-page whitepaper with business-ready abbreviations to use will be published at release time.
- Boss OOFs: Out of Office Assistant (Automatic Replies) now has a “boss” feature, which will send a different message to your upward reporting chain in the GAL than everyone else. Now, you can be “out sick with the flu” to your boss while “kicking ass and taking names” in Vegas to your buddies.
- Active Inbox Rules (AIR) Agent: The Exchange engineering team is especially proud of its extensibility features. The AIR Agent is a step in this direction, allowing you to manage users’ email based on their past behavior, and reduce TCO. The AIR agent interfaces with your helpdesk system and reads the number of “I can’t find my email” tickets created by a user. If the message is found to have been automatically moved by an Inbox rule that the user created, the AIR agent automatically creates a server-side rule to move such items back to the Inbox. This should greatly reduce the number of helpdesk tickets created by the user.If the user creates any additional rules to move messages, the agent responds by creating server-side rules to move messages from all folders back to the Inbox. This action is completely transparent to the user.
- Mobile Read Receipts: Given so many of you now consume email on your mobile devices, we are positive you’ll find this new mobile feature quite useful. When you receive a message with a read receipt requested on your mobile device, the mobile email client will activate the camera on your mobile device and transmit a video to the sender, really proving you’ve actually read the message. Mobile Read Receipts are sent with important metadata information such as your expressions (visual and verbal), and your GPS coordinates.
Open Your Heart at Knifepoint
Sometimes, you just really need to read something like this. What would you aspire to do in Julio’s position?
Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner. But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.
He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife. “He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says.
As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”
The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’”
Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me… Hey, you’re more than welcome.”
“You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help,” Diaz says. He and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.
“The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi,” Diaz says. “The kid was like, ‘You know everybody here. Do you own this place?’”
“No, I just eat here a lot,” Diaz told the teen. “He says, ‘But you’re even nice to the dishwasher.’” Diaz replied, “Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the teen said. Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. “He just had almost a sad face,” Diaz says.
The teen couldn’t answer Diaz — or he didn’t want to.
When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ‘cause you have my money, and I can’t pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”
The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I gave him $20… I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”
Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave it to me.”
Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, “You’re the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch.”
“I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”
What do you think? Leave a comment!Configuring your Smartphone for MMS on the Rogers Network
If there’s one thing I love doing, it’s playing around with smartphones. I have an HTC HD2, and I fear I’m addicted to upgrading its software and running bleeding edge operating systems on it. So when I bricked it (messed it up so badly that it effectively turned into little more than a brick) the other day for the 62,498th time, I decided it was time to abandon Windows Mobile 6.5 and install Google Android 2.3.
If you’ve ever used an unlocked phone on a network that doesn’t support it (like an HD2 on the Rogers network in Canada), you may be familiar with issues such as your data connection failing to work, or MMS (picture) messages failing to send. This is because your phone needs to know where on the internet to look to get a connection. Phones sold directly by service providers come with these settings already configured, unlike unlocked phones that they don’t support.
If you’ve ever dealt with Rogers’ tech support department, you know that getting help with such issues can be as fun as trying to pry a banana from the thick, leathery hands of an angry gorilla that doesn’t like to share.
This post is for anyone on the Rogers network in Canada who happens to be seeking this information for a quick fix to their MMS woes. I found that the settings in my new Android Cyanogen ROM were entered incorrectly, and these are the settings I used to regain the ability to send pictures of my ugly mug to anyone I want to scare the crap out of an a given day.
Configuring Your Smartphone to Use MMS on the Rogers Network
Find your phone’s network connection settings. On Android, they’re located under Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile networks > Access Point Names. You should find an entry dedicated to Rogers MMS. Open it, and fill in the following settings:
- Name: Rogers MMS
- APN: media.com
- Username: media
- Password: mda01
- Server: 172.25.0.107
- MMSC: http://mms.gprs.rogers.com (make sure “gprs” is spelled correctly; on mine, it was misspelled as “grps”)
- MMS Proxy: 10.128.1.69
- MMS Port: 80
- MCC: 302
- MNC: 720
- APN Type: mms
An example of what your Rogers MMS settings should look like
Check the entry for your normal data connection, and under APN Type, ensure that “mms” is NOT in the list. This will ensure your phone looks to the Rogers MMS profile when you’re sending and receiving pictures messages, and not the normal data connection.
If your normal data connection isn’t working either…
If your normal data connection isn’t working either, check the settings in the other connection profile against the following:
- Name: Rogers
- APN: internet.com
- Username: wapuser1
- Password: wap
- MCC: 302
- MNC: 720
You should be able to leave all other fields blank, as long as you have the above details entered.
You’re Welcome
A simple fix that I’m sure will only be useful to a handful of people looking for very specific information, but I thought I’d share. Questions? Feel free to leave them in a comment or email me. Don’t thank me; Just give me that banana the next time we run into each other.
3 people have commented. What do you think?Your Life Reloaded
There’s a very interesting trending topic making the rounds through Twitter this week. I noticed it this morning while eating my croissant (baked personally for me by a resident octopus) and drinking my tea (brewed for me by a monocle-wearing shark).
That Trending Topic is #TweetYour16YearOldSelf
For the uninitiated, what is a trending topic on Twitter? Essentially, a trending topic is a word or phrase that has generated a lot of buzz, having been mentioned by a lot of people on Twitter throughout the day. In this case, someone came up with the idea to tweet something they’d like to tell their younger self (perhaps some advice), and after a while, the idea spread like wild fire.
Reading some of the things people would say if they could send a tweet to their younger selves has been interesting, entertaining and thought provoking. But I wasn’t compelled to participate myself until reading a lovely blog post by Chibi Jeebs, in which she highlighted a few things in particular that she would tell a young Chibi.
How rad. Introspection is necessary to improve yourself as a human being, and this trend encourages it. What better way to make yourself a better man or woman in the future than to look to your past? You can’t change the mistakes, but you can learn from them.
What would I say if I could send a tweet to my 16-year-old self?
I wouldn’t stop at just one thing. Here’s what advice I’d give to Bizarro-Tristan:
- Those jeans are far, far too baggy. You look like a clown. Ask Dad to take them in for you.
- Is this what you really want? Or is it what you think everyone else wants? You know what I’m talking about.
- Be patient. You’ll find what you need; Just not yet, and not from who you think right now.
- No one person is ever worth neglecting your true friends for. You need them, and they need you.
- Geeks will be cool in a few years. Seriously.
- That idea you have, that thing that you’re building right now… It’s good! Keep developing it. Don’t let it die.
- You’re going to be stupid and end your friendship with your best friend. But it’s ok; You’ll both smarten up, and your friendship will become stronger than ever.
- Basket weaving is no substitute for calculus, and your high school does not offer such a course.
- Don’t stop writing code.
- Turns out it’s true – Mum and Dad really do know what they’re talking about. Appreciate their wisdom, you dork.
- Invent Twitter.
What if you could do it all again?
What if you could go back to sixteen and do it all again? Or what if you could go back, meet that younger you and guide them through their next few years with the knowledge and wisdom you have now? Would you do it?
Your first instinct may be to say yes. After all, think of how much better your life could be now if you had done a few things a little differently. But would you really be the same person you are today? Are we truly the sum of all our experiences? And if you changed even one of those experiences, what impact would it have on you or your life now? Don’t think about it too hard. I do sometimes, and it leaves my mind feeling like it’s just been smacked in the buttocks with a splintery cricket bat covered with angry fire ants.
But in the end, my answer is no. I made mistakes when I was sixteen. I’ve made mistakes since then. I’m still making them now. I need the experience and the strength I’ve gained from all those past mistakes, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Except maybe a coconut.
8 people have commented. What do you think?24 Truths for Mature Humans
I didn’t make these up. I read them somewhere on Tumblr. But they made me laugh. Enjoy.
- The most important part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
- Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize that you’re wrong.
- I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.
- There is a great need for a sarcasm font.
- How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
- Was learning cursive really necessary?
- Map Quest (or Google Maps!) really needs to start their directions on step five. I’m pretty sure I know how to get out of my own neighbourhood.
- Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
- I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.
- Bad decisions make for good stories.
- You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren’t going to do anything else productive for the rest of the day.
- Can we all just agree to ignore whatever technology is invented after Blu Ray? I don’t want to have to restart my collection… Again.
- I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Microsoft Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I did not make any changes to.
- I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
- I think the freezer deserves a light as well.
- I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I bet on any given Friday or Saturday night, more kisses begin with Budweiser than with Kay.
- I wish Google Maps has an “Avoid this Neighbourhood” routing option.
- I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.
- How many times is it appropriate to say, “What?!” before you just smile and nod because you still didn’t hear or understand a word they said?
- I love the sense of camaraderie you feel when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front.
- Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
- Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch three consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
- Even under ideal conditions, people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and pinning the tail on the donkey. But I’d bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from three feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time!
- The first testicular guard, the cup, was used in hockey in 1874, and the first helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important.
