I'm doing my first AdWords ads for iLetDown, so I've written a few ads like this:
Relax and Pump Quickly
Trigger your letdown reflex!
Buy iLetDown for iPhone.
www.attachmentcomputing.com
These were working fine until yesterday, when I tried to edit them slightly, and all my ads were halted because... Apple has asked Google to prohibit the trademarked "iPhone" term from being used in AdWords ads.
Huh? So the maker of this phone that's being promoted as a platform is preventing developers from advertising the fact that they've created products for that platform?
I stayed away from Apple for a long, long time, so maybe I'm just being naive about how this part of the world works. Does Apple always crap on its community like this?
My first iPhone app is available on the Apple iTunes App Store!
iLetDown helps moms express breast milk quickly and easily by helping trigger the let-down reflex. Visit the iLetDown site to learn more.
You're probably wondering why I picked such a specific market segment (working, lactating moms who buy apps for their iPhones) rather than something general like a puzzle game. Mostly it was because I knew that marketing my own product would be hard. I wanted to learn the ropes with an app that I could write relatively quickly, rather than investing many months in a game and then making lots of mistakes with its marketing.
Do you know anyone who recently had a baby and is going back to work? If so, please let her know about iLetDown. Makes a great gift!
Every once in a while I'll forget that I did something, and I'll do it again, or I'll at least start doing it before I remember that I already did it. When this happens, I sometimes surprise myself by re-doing it exactly the same way I did before.
Example: I wanted to open a savings account for my one-month-old daughter, who got her Social Security number a few days ago. So today I do the following:
- Open Notepad (actually Notepad2, which is a great Notepad replacement).
- Type her name: first name, middle initial, last name.
- New line.
- Type her SSN.
- Print.
- Get the paper from the printer, get in the car, etc.
When I got to step 4, however, I asked myself "Wait, didn't I already print this out two days ago?" So I walk to the printer and sure enough, find a sheet of paper with first name, middle initial, last name, new line, SSN. And I remember that I was about to go get the sheet of paper two days ago when the phone rang and I got distracted.
On one hand, of course, I worry that this forgetfulness is the beginning of early-onset dementia. But on the other hand, as a software engineer I take delight in the reproducibility of my own behavior. It's very geekily comforting to know that if I'm placed in the same situation twice, I'll probably behave the same way twice, right down to the middle initial.
I hereby nominate the following photograph for Photoshop Disasters:
Typical PSDs involving missing or grotesquely deformed limbs in Victoria's Secret catalogs. This one's different because it's a disaster that nobody used Photoshop to create this picture. Here's what I was able to do in eight minutes:
1. Search Google Images for "Statute of Liberty" and find this:
2. Find this on the web:
3. Spend four minutes in Photoshop Elements (the lobotomized version of PS) and produce this:
Does it look horrible? Sure, but this is what an amateur can do in eight minutes. Imagine what a professional could do in an hour. Including stock art purchases, labor costs, uh... electricity to run the computer, and maybe even a brand-new retail copy of Photoshop, you're still talking under $1,000 to produce the same picture. Save a third of a million dollars, lots of 911 phone calls, and unemployment insurance.
If anyone with real Photoshop talent reads this blog, please start a meme: do your best faked version of the real photo and post it on your favorite photo site with tag whitehousephotoshopdisaster.
Update 5/10/2009: Great work, Marius!
I have two Linux machines and a gigantic file on one that I want on the other. The two machines are connected by Ethernet. scp is incredibly slow, about 1.6MB/second. I don't feel like setting up samba or nfs on either. I don't care about security, authenticity, or integrity; I can md5sum if necessary, and both machines are isolated from the Internet.
I assumed the scp slowness was a CPU thing with ssh encryption, but someone on the web said the problem was in fact at a lower level (64K buffer sizes in ssh). The best solution I came up with was python -c "import SimpleHTTPServer;SimpleHTTPServer.test()" on the source machine and then wget source:8000 myfile on the other machine. That got me about 8MB/sec, which was barely fast enough to get the job done, so I stopped investigating.
But for next time, there must be a clever command-line solution that a Linux guru can recommend. Maybe piping through nc?
9:16 call 1-800-967-2346
9:18 get Tarik on the phone, explain problem
9:22 after he tries to talk me out of it, I get transferred
9:23 new person picks up
9:24 The moment I say the word "cancel" she hangs up
9:25 dial again
9:28 new person, woman answers
9:29 transferring
9:30 answer. This woman sounds competent
9:31 confirming address to her again
9:32 trying to talk me out of it, wants to sell me a home radio if I'm not listening to it in the car
9:33 she's telling me it's still live through July 6
9:34 will send me a letter within 2-3 weeks of cancellation (after July 7)
9:34 hang up
OK, now the background: I've been through the process of canceling XM radio before, and it was pretty painful. They really played all the dirty tricks on me: endless transfers with occasional dead ends, repeated confirmation of account numbers and mailing addresses, hidden phone numbers, etc. I wouldn't ever do business with them again, but Mary really liked having the radio, so a year or so later when we got a new car we signed up again. That car's since been replaced with a minivan, and the radio (which was permanently installed in that car) is no longer being listened to.
A recent web search of other people's experiences showed that as of recently the XM clowns were still doing the same kind of stuff. So I was not at all surprised when the "Cancellation Department" hung up on me this morning the moment I uttered the word "cancel."
However, I was surprised that I had to speak to only four people this time and dial only twice over the space of 18 minutes. (We'll see whether the charges on the credit card really do stop.) The first woman in the cancellation department had the "f*** you and your f***ing family" attitude the moment she answered the phone, but the second one was very bright and cheery. So maybe it's just luck of the draw.
Anyway, boring live blog. But I guess that's a good thing.
