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G2BHome Okay, I love Maine and miss it already. Hey, one of my bags and my cell phone managed to stay while I left. I tried to get on line from JFK yesterday. Here's what I wrote to my ISP about the experience:
To find a local access number, I first called the Xo front desk, which told me they can't give me any human beings other than those that answer the Dial Up Support number. At that number, I'm caller # 20. It's been 20 minutes with no answer. Meanwhile, I've found the email below and managed to get another guy's laptop to the support page. There I see the local number is 718-210-0541. It's constantly busy. The access number page doesn't list an 800 number, although I know there is one (or used to be, when Xo was Concentric). Searching for the 800 area code yields no results. I just went back to the Xo home page on the other guy's laptop, where Concentric used to have a pop-out menu with access numbers as one of the choices; but that's gone and the new home page is a brochure. There's nothing there for existing customers. The search for "access" brings up a useless pile of old press releases that contain the word "access." So, with a plane leaving for SFO in a few minutes, I'm SOL. Please do your customers a favor. Turn the Xo home page into something useful for customers. And please create a system that lets customers find access numbers by calling in. Putting them only on the Web is a Catch-22 of a perverse sort: you can't dial in without an access number, and you can't find an access number without dialing in. Of course, that didn't go out until I got back today. He's only got one tooth, but watch out. The week's mail filled two of those translucent corrogated boxes the Post Office lends you when they hand over too much mail. I'm surprised it was that little. On top was the latest Standard, which I immediately hauled into the john for a fast scan (insert presumptive joke here). What immediately impressed me (the idea, I guess) was the series of 5x5 inch ads for Macromedia Flash. Each features a greenish and unhappy user who appears to be shot by a digital camera under bad flourescent light. Their headlines say "Betty Hickey doesn't have Flash. Does have restraining orders from all three ex-husbands." And "Troy Swope doesn't have Flash. Does do whatever his dog tells him to do." And "Linus Karlsson doesn't have Flash. Does brush his tooth every morning." (Far as I know, Linus Torvalds is the only Scandinavian named Linus — having been named by his parents after the American scientist Linus Pauling — but I'll let that one pass without further remark.) Each ad has a caption that reads "96% of online users have Macromedia Flash (tm) Player. The other 4% frankly scare us." I used to like Marcromedia. I don't anymore. And I frankly hope that scares them. Rather than rant about the subject myself, let's slip the links holding the toothsome Dack, purveyor of the now-legendary Web Economy Bullshit Generator. Dack slashes Flash rather nicely on his Flash Is Evil page, and again on his Flash vs. HTML: A Usability Test. And let's not keep chained the equally well-fanged and far more Scandanavian Jakob Nielsen, who chews away in Flash: 99% Bad. Advice to Macromedia: fire the agency, or whoever came up with this dumb idea, before your market fires you.
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