Category: Services & Products

My iPod story

For years, my friends tell me how great the iPod is and as a music lover, I always wonder why I didn’t get an iPod for my musics. So I decided to buy one as my X’mas gift last year. Before the actual purchase I did a very scientific evaluation. I entered the storage size, weight, volume (!) and price of the iPod Nano, Touch and 80G / 160G Classics into a spreadsheet along with same figures of my Archos and Dopod (my trusty digital wallet and smartphone).

Then I calculated the weight per song, volume per song and cost per song (to store in iPod), and I also performed sensitivity analysis to tell what device is the best buy if I have 2,000, 4,000, 10,000, or 20,000 songs to store to it.

The result of this geeky sophisticated analysis was I needed a black iPod Classic 80G. Why the analysis could tell what color I needed ? I don’t have a clue … 😎

But then the trouble beings … first I have trouble to make the iPod recognize the song details if those are not in English … I have to retype hundreds of songs’ title, album and artist information. In a word, painful.

The second issue is without an iTunes store in my country, I have no easy way to get the cover art to the iTunes and iPod. After lots of searching, evaluation I eventually installed a Yahoo Widget – iTunes Companion that will automatically download the album art from Amazon.

The most recent trouble is after just 3 weeks of usage, my iPod can no longer play songs smoothly – it will play one song, and refuse to play the next even I press the next button. Again, I searched numerous forums to find the ins and outs of it. Finally, I found a way to reset the iPod and solved the problem (for now):

  1. Toggle the Hold switch on and off
  2. Press and hold the Menu and Center (Select) buttons simultaneously until the Apple logo appears (about 6 to 10 seconds).
  3. You will see the Apple Logo appear and your iPod will come to life with a lit screen. If this does not happen please within 2 mintues please repeat steps 1 and 2.

A looooong story, but if you are considering to buy an iPod … re-read this post. 😎

One-click greeting

Ages ago I was told sending a letter to your friends in festive seasons were better than just sending a greeting card. And since the dawn of Internet, people told me sending my greetings electronically via emails or e-Cards to my friends was the better and trendier way.

Then in recent years, we just sent out short messages via our mobile phone, or messaging software.

But just a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t send short messages, emails, and letter. All we did was just forward a tiny picture of (310 x 230 pixels), to a bunch of friends. We didn’t even need to enter the names of our friends, as we just did a “Select all” from the tool – Facebook.

From letter, to card, to e-Card, to short message, to one-click forward … it’s a lot easier, it’s effortless, but are we getting closer ?

Happy New Year

$250 richer

What is a good customer services experience ? Here is one example …

As the owner of the Search Engine Marketing 1.0 by Dan Thies, I had a chance to upgrade to the version 2.0 with a discount. I therefore ordered the new book and it arrived yesterday. However, I found another book in the package – Web Design Business Kit 2.0 (worth US$ 250). Oooops …

So I sent an email to their customer services about this and here is their reply this morning:

I am sorry to hear that you received the incorrect title. I have contacted our warehouse and asked them to reship the correct item to you.

As compensation for the error please feel free to keep The Web Design Business Kit or perhaps pass it onto a friend or colleague or even the local library or school. Again, I am sorry for the error and any inconvenience.

Oh I am just US$ 250 richer today … 😎

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Olympus E-3 event

5 weeks after the launch of the new camera E-3, the local Olympus representative office organized an E-3 event for the local Olympus user group. Thanks to the user group leaders and the Olympus office, there were lots of E-3 and the whole line of lenses for us to try out. The E-3 is really cool with a super fast auto-focusing system and a weather-proof body.

Very tempting !!

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Clinic visit

So after the open-heart operation, I need to visit the hospital clinic once in a while to check various things. Here is a recap of the conversation today I have with the doctor:

Doctor : (Look blank)
Me : (Smiling)
[ 30 seconds later ]
Doctor : (Look blank) You look familiar, have we met before ?
[5 seconds later ]
Me : (Still smiling) Yes, I was here two weeks ago, you checked my previous reports … and asked me to do a blood test.
Doctor : (Still looking blank) But there is no record in the system.
[ 30 seconds later, after some punching to the system ]
Doctor : (Smiling) Ah … I found your record …
Me : (Look blank and murmuring #$^&@#$)