The second was to try to log into their Community Site and ask. Fortunately it is possible to read their community site, which is how I found the page above; this also was an epic fail because the bridge between My Verizon and the community site doesn’t accept my credentials.  This was very odd since I am already logged into their main My Verizon site, but it means their bridge between their back end business apps and their Lithium based support site is crap.

Now you might be thinking  – hmmm, just take your lunch and send them an email using their Contact form. No dice there. You see, as soon as you select Internet > Technical Support, the form automatically pushes you to their main support FAQ page, not allowing you to submit a support request form. You cannot get support through the Support Request Form.

Okay then – they have Live Chat! Lets try that. Clicking on the Live Chat option on their website, you are immediately informed that the service is not available.

If you check that link above, you can see the responses of other customers who are seeing the blame game being played out between Blizzard and Verizon, which of course is nonsense since customers are chiming in who have nothing to do with Blizzard and World of Warcraft.

Almost every company hates support calls because they cost money.  Some will argue that its an opportunity to get feedback from your customers – and yes, that is very useful – if there is a way for that information to reach decision makers in the company. With very large, commodity service companies though, its a questionable return. Actually adding new, unique or interesting services that differentiate you from the other guy means a change in corporate strategy – even if its something very small.  Management likely doesn’t want to hear it, because change can be very costly, and if the change doesn’t bring back a huge financial return then its a death sentence for the executive or manager that tries to change the status quo.

Now Verizon is huge, with complex regional issues, partners, regulations – so for every and any location there are differing rules. Verizon could put this to use though, by offering a System Status link to any account that is regionally linked. As soon as the first few irritated Oregonians began calling in and they diagnose there is a problem, they could have updated a region based status page with relevant information – and put up an alert as soon as you log into your My Verizon account to let you know that something is affecting you right now. Very simple, and chances are your discount ISP or service provider already does something like this.  That would reduce their touch costs significantly.

Quicktime’s APIs were rich with functionality. You could create interactive Quicktime movies with simulated panoramas and zoomable, faux 3d objects. Wired sprites were a big deal for a while – you could create objects within movies that added programmatic functionality. This wasn’t an easy task though, and at least for the more programmatic capabilities, the APIs on Windows were always a bit buggy.

The death of HyperCard is covered elsewhere so I wont rehash it – but before its death, there was even some effort to recreate it on the back of the Quicktime API. Good thing there were alternatives like Runtime Revolution which adds many, many more features like cross platform capability. However any media rich application on the Mac likely uses Quicktime to some degree, and most HyperCard like programs do.

With Quicktime X, included with Snow Leopard, Apple has eliminated the interactive 3D and panorama capabilities of QuicktimeVR – that is – the ability to play back existing content. The decade of investment in a technology made by Apple and many, many content creators has become orphaned. But that’s not the only omission. Quicktime X also eliminates most export options, and turns those that remain into advertisements for Apple products.

This is a very sad day for interactive media – not only because of the removal of this capability but also because it demonstrates that you cannot rely on Apple to act in anyone’ s interest other than their own. This is also something that many iPhone developers have come to learn the hard way.

I guess I should have expected this. One of our customers had trouble receiving download information because Spamhaus is blocking our meshbox.com email. Sure enough, a Spamhaus document mentions treating all Verizon customers using Port 25 as – you guessed it – spammers.

Before leaving for MacWorld 2009, I was aware that I would return and need to install updates to those two boxes almost immediately. Trend Micro, like many anti-virus packages warns you regularly that your subscription is about to expire. Okay, no problem there, that’s a good thing and other packages like Panda, Kasparsky and Norton do something similar. But here’s the difference: Trend Micro Internet Security didn’t just turn off updates – it turned itself off entirely – no anti-virus protection at all (even with updates a day old) and it turned off its own firewall.

Alarmed by finding an unprotected computer, I tried to open the Trend Micro console. Sure enough, the only thing visible on the console was information on how to upgrade. Nowhere could I see a way to keep using the same profile the computer had been using only a day before.

That’s right – you aren’t safe with using day old virus profiles – when your subscription ends with Trend Micro, it exposes you to the elements. That is entirely unconscionable. Fortunately, I had a box of Panda and Kasparsky available, so the exposure was limited.

You cannot easily run Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 at the same time, without significant and non-intuitive playing around with profiles. What are the Mozilla developers thinking? Web developers have to test their web pages with multiple browsers – who does not know this?  What makes web developers howl about every new version of Internet Explorer? Let you users decide how many installations they want to run at one time.

Firefox 3 deactivates incompatible Firefox 2 compatible plug-ins, and does not offer any sort of emulation mode. This would be a non-issue if you could run Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 on the same computer without the hoop jumping. It was only after installing Firefox 3 that I discovered it deactivated the wonderful Addthis bookmarking tool. I use this tool many times a day because it allows me to not only bookmark pages using DIGG, Google Bookmarks and other services, but also to easily link a page to my Twitter profile. Nothing Firefox 3 adds replaces this, and its more important to me than the upgrade.

Why didn’t I visit the Mozilla user other community forums first? Because this is my first disappointment with Mozilla.

As of this date, the forums are packed with unhappy upgraders looking to downgrade to Firefox 2.  If you are considering upgrading – read the firefox forums first.