Disqus - Latest Comments for Jeff Haynie

Re: JBoss in trouble?

Jeff Haynie — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 00:44:03 -0000

As a follow-up to this post, CRN is reporting in their blog that Marc has left for paternity leave. I'm sure he's gone for good. Why would he return?

Re: SoCon7 coming in February

Jeff Haynie — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 17:05:44 -0000

Yes, we had them in collectively during Web1.0 - but we decided not to concern ourselves with that too much. :)

SoCon07 I think is the official name we came up with -- I actually liked SoCon7 so I registered both. 2007 is obviously what 07 was meant to convey.

Does this mean that you'll come since you missed 1-6?

Re: Efficient Feeds on Mac OSX

Jeff Haynie — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 21:14:53 -0000

I used it for about a day more than 6 months ago. I keep hearing great things about it. I'll try it again. My biggest issue with separate heavy applications is that I already have too many applications running and I'm too excited about yet-another-non-browser application running. Does it have a tray notifier like application where I can only open the entire application to read the feeds in more detail? One advantage to something like this google reader notifier is that I can run it and then only when I want to read in more detail, do I open up an additional firefox tab. I run my browser about 99% of the time, so having another tab running a web app is much easier to manage.

Re: SoCon7 coming in February

Jeff Haynie — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 10:33:33 -0000

Yes, I don't know if there is term for your type of blogging.

I think of it as "autoblogging":

I del.icio.us, therefore, I blog.

Re: Please take down the Christmas stuff

Jeff Haynie — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 22:35:45 -0000

OK, one of my friends (and neighbor) wrote me a funny private email reply to my post. I'll post a portion of her funny response as a comment from my here ....

"Now, it’s time to address your dirty little secret. Is it really a vacation or holiday if you take the stuff down the DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS? Are you the friggen Grinch’s twin brother. Don’t you think that maybe your Dad is the crazy one? The DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS? I mean, that’s the other extreme. Uh hum. You just mull that over a bit.

I do agree with the friggen outdoor lights and inflatables. What is with that anyways? This neighborhood looked very Costco this year. You’d never see the full manger scene, one horse open sleigh and snowglobes in Crooked Creek."

Thank you. And, yes, maybe you're right... maybe I need to see a psychologist about this right now. Maybe I should just go ahead and check myself in - at least virtually. :)

Re: Please take down the Christmas stuff

Jeff Haynie — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:30:15 -0000

I guess my gut reaction was that I would only get a new years kiss from my wife after this many years if i watched the ball drop with her. But, you're right, it's really silly. This is not good, you're the 2nd person to suggest I'm not doing too well mentally. :)

Re: Micro Social Networks will explode in 2007

Jeff Haynie — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 12:11:16 -0000

Thanks, Martin, for the tip on ITtoolbox. Indeed, this is exactly what I'm talking about. I just signed up and created my profile and invited some friends. I instantly found 2 groups that I was interested in: AJAX and Javascript, and signed up.

Re: Micro Social Networks will explode in 2007

Jeff Haynie — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 12:22:31 -0000

Hey Joe,
Thanks for the comment. You're right about 2007 - I should have been more clear. I don't think federated identity will make any impact in 2007 - however, I do believe that micro social networks will (and already are) start to become a very real part of our life. I think federated identities need to be in place, however, or they will suffer from the profile creation fatigue in a worse way than the "walmarts of social networks". Just in these 2 comments, to prove my point, there are 2 more new micro networks I have discovered - and in both, I'm already tired setting up my profile information. :)

Re: AppFuse = Ruby on Rail for Java

Jeff Haynie — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 10:36:38 -0000

Hey Ken, you're right - or at least partially I think.

I was less comparing AppFuse against Rails - but really comparing what Ruby on Rails has done for the Ruby language and what AppFuse *could* attempt to do for Java.

Ruby has generators and other types of utilities that do add Authentication, Signup, etc. What's nice is that you generate them - instead of having a bloated framework of which you have all these wonderful capabilities - of which you only use 75%.

Sometimes, less is more. If you can however have access - through plugins, generators, what not - to these extended capabilities, I think you have something powerful.

Java has gotten into too much bloat - where everything is jammed into the JDK, into the J2EE for the containers, and what not. Library dependency versioning in Java is now akin to DLL hell for Microsoft. At least, that's been my experience.

I'm not trying to cast Ruby as a better language than Java - although I think that it has a lot of merits and I enjoy both languages. What I am a believer in is that Ruby and its associated infrastructure, such as Rails and Gems, has solved some of the core problems that plague Java projects today (and in the past).

Too often with Java projects (at large), sophistication translates into complication. I don't think this is very good and certainly shouldn't always be required. I think a loose example if Rake versus Maven. I could write a whole blog post on these types of comparisons (and probably will, or maybe you should?).

Thanks for commenting.

Re: Cisco sues Apple; name it “Awesome Apple Phone”

Jeff Haynie — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 22:40:59 -0000

I like that question: "will it cost Apple more as a percentage of its income for the right to call it that".

The problem with the pricing is marketing and position challenge for Apple. The iPhone is not a phone. Yes, I realize that it's mainly a phone (hell, it's called iPhone), but it really does transcend today's 2nd generation phones into something that's really something of the future. It's a phone, email client, the mini web browser makes it an internet device, it's a video and audio ipod, it's a camera and it's got plenty of disk, cpu memory to be almost a full fledged computer.

Some people just don't need or even want all that. And, that's cool. Some people don't want a Tivo, or HDTV or even a nice car. And, that's OK.

Clearly, Apple products are more than just utility - they're lifestyle products. And they're definitely products for people who are willing to pay more for what they deliver. It's the old adage: "you get what you pay for".

If you want a cheap month to month or even pre-paid phone plan - go get one - you can just about get them for next to nothing. They're close to disposable. It's not great and you can't do much with them - thus the price.

If you don't mind watching TV on your old Analog TV - that's cool. I still have one in my house like that. However, when you watch a movie on your HDTV receiver and then go back - you can tell why HDTV is so much better, and more expensive.

$600 is a lot of money. It will be interesting to see how many people take the plunge. I predict that they will immediately have shortages and they will blow out their inventory very fast. Next year's Apple announcement will be that they sold 1 million phones in the first 6 months. That's my bet.

Re: D-Link’s terrible firmware upgrade experience

Jeff Haynie — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:59:57 -0000

I'll comment here to track my on-going saga with D-Link. After I wrote this entry, I decided to email customer support and about 3 hours later received the following reply from a customer service rep via email:

Thank you for contacting D-Link Customer Service. I apologize for the poor experience with our tech support. Please provide me with your phone number so i could better assist you, I will transfer you with a product specialist or if you would like to contact them direct. Please contact Product Specialist department at 877-453-5465 ext.3026. . I apologize for the poor experience with our tech support.

Thank you for choosing D-Link! Have a great day!

OK, not too bad. I'm actually impressed they responded at all. Most of the time these days when I email a company to complain, my complaint goes ignored. At least they had the guts to return my email with a somewhat decent acknowledgment and offer to help.

I have returned their email with my number and offered to talk with one of their so called product specialists. Let's see how long it takes them to respond and what kind of respond I get. I will be amazed if the person who calls even reads my entry before they call. My prediction is that they will have no clue and will ask me what my problem is and how hey can help. Of course, the key word "my problem". We shall see..... Stay tuned for more updates.

Re: Cisco sues Apple; name it “Awesome Apple Phone”

Jeff Haynie — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 01:09:34 -0000

I found this interesting entry on Cisco's Blog about the trademark infringement.

I'm impressed Cisco took it to their blog with a very good explanation of the suit.

Mark's point is very good about Apple valuing "innovation" and asks "how would Apple react if someone launched a product called iPod but claimed it was ok to use the name because it used a different video format?"

Re: How will iPhone change the speech industry?

Jeff Haynie — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:29:05 -0000

Thanks Chris. I'm such a speech nut and hope you're correct. The "next 5 year" cycle has just been happening for about 20 years now. :)

Re: Wikiseek doesn’t yet impress

Jeff Haynie — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 20:00:09 -0000

Hey Stephen, glad to hear from you - it's been awhile. I'm surprised you responded to this post and not my post about iPhone and the Speech Industry ... :)

I think you're right in the context about Ajax as a programming language vs. Ajax from the point of encyclopedic information. However, is there are strong set of use cases for a separate, standalone search engine around this type of information? It's an interesting search problem - trend vs. history I guess -- and one of context which is even more interesting in my opinion.

It would be interesting to add a relevancy ranking engine to the search results page to allow people to score search results (sort of like a digg for search results) and then try and find out how it's performing. After this post, I stumbled upon several other people who had very similar experiences to mine. Maybe it's an expectation thing, maybe it's pointing out some confusion in it's intent.... Maybe we're just all being too difficult? I dunno....

Thanks for the comment - I hope things are well for you in Redmond.

Re: D-Link’s terrible firmware upgrade experience

Jeff Haynie — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:38:28 -0000

Well, nothing since Friday. I guess we can chalk it up as "nice try". Yeah, D-Link support sucks - they just proved it.

Re: Living Cheap in Alpharetta

Jeff Haynie — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 09:55:29 -0000

Uhhhhhh.... yea! :(

Re: How to disable Jetty default favicon

Jeff Haynie — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 22:03:07 -0000

I just looked at your website and it looks correct to me. It's not showing the jetty icon - it's showing the default favicon by the browser. If you want to set your favicon, you'll need to add the following to your HTML head section:


<link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />

Change your href to match your icon.

Re: Dear Java

Jeff Haynie — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 11:07:02 -0000

I really will enjoy seeing the whole Java is mature and stable and Ruby is not debate. I suffered through this in Java and was a very staunch promoter for the last 10 years for Java. I also was one of the only companies 5 years ago doing Java in the Telecommunications industry - and I still have nightmares of the debates I had with very large telecommunications companies who would send their teams of elite systems engineers to tell me that Java was not capable of doing very large scale systems. It's funny how with time, things change - or remain the same. The debate was always C was so much more mature, stable and scalable over Java. Now, the debate rages over Ruby vs. Java. Ruby is the new entrant and Java is old hat. Life is so beautiful. And in ten years, we'll be doing this again. :)

Re: Wikiseek doesn’t yet impress

Jeff Haynie — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 01:18:19 -0000

Thanks Brian,

You're absolutely correct and I just re-read my post and I did say "The Wikipedia Foundation" in my introduction paragraph. I thought I had fixed that when I first proofed my post - but I guess I missed it....

Thanks for the correction.

Re: What’s up Atlanta?

Jeff Haynie — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:29:20 -0000

Thanks for the point of clarification -- TAG is definitely a separate and distinct organization than the chamber.

Tino, I hope your representation on the Executive Committee of the Atlanta Chamber will help sway them to look to our local technology community for participation as David suggested.

David, as I'm sure you are, a lot of us are passionate about helping continue to grow our technology base in the south and it would be good if you could include some of us in the discussion.

Best of Luck.

Re: Look in the mirror Atlanta

Jeff Haynie — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 14:09:55 -0000

Wow - that sounds like fun. I have another Geek dinner planned unfortunately so I can't come. Darnnit! Hopefully some others reading might be able to attend.

See you Saturday!

Re: Look in the mirror Atlanta

Jeff Haynie — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:09:25 -0000

Amro,

Backup has been done and you just release your own product that does that - for free.

Google wasn't exactly the first search engine - we all thought, "why another one?" (until we used it).

Just because something exists already - doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It doesn't mean you should either....

You're right about startups going down in flames - but then again, almost a all startups fail or have undesirable outcomes (for most). That's just part of the game. So, learn from the experience, get smart and do it again. (or find entrepreneurs you can get involved with).

Entrepreneurs and business people are looking for talent and passionate engineers like yourself to take the risk, join their gig and change the world. Or .... at least try. That's more than what most people are willing to do.

Re: SoCon07: how it came together

Jeff Haynie — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 23:24:34 -0000

Yes, both you and Sherry are correct in that a number of people came together to help with the event - way beyond what we could have done ourselves. I failed to correctly characterize what I was trying to explain, which was that once we took charge and made the decision, we were able to marshal a number of people behind the event to make it happen. Countless numbers helped and supported the effort - and to that, I'm very greatful and indebted.

Re: SoCon07: how it came together

Jeff Haynie — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:56:32 -0000

Hey Tony,

You can use my tipping point quote if I can use your "Atlanta has a thriving tech community" quote! :) It's funny that 2 valley wags travelled all the way from the SV to an Atlanta event and thought we provided some value. That's wonderful!

It was a pleasure meeting you and Sarah -- you guys are awesome too! Thanks for your help and support and looking forward to a good friendship with you both.

Re: SoCon07: how it came together

Jeff Haynie — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:57:41 -0000

As far as music, film - I talked with someone who was involved laterally with Music Midtown about something similar. It is a very interesting idea.

Re: The other “Jeff Haynie”’s

Jeff Haynie — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:25:28 -0000

William, I am not the Jeff Haynie that painted this picture. You'll have to contact him directly. His webpage contains his email. Good luck.

Re: GA Technology Summit

Jeff Haynie — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 00:27:28 -0000

Amani Channel has a nice video that summarizes the event.

Re: Voice Hosting M&A activity

Jeff Haynie — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 13:27:59 -0000

Hey Pramod,

I'm not really privy to Voxeo's revenue as an outsider and being that they're a private company. My best guess is that their revenue will be in the $10-15M target this year and from what I've seen, they look to be in the 1.5-2x growth pattern.

From an outside viewpoint, they've continued to make strong investments in their core platform (both hosted and on-prem) and I've recently had personal deployment experience with their product line as a customer/partner with a nice size call center (200 ports).

They have also opened a new data center in Las Vegas and moved to larger facilities in the existing Orlando, Atlanta facilities and last year opened an Europe/Middle east facility.

I think Voxeo's biggest weakness is that they're spread a little too thin. However, they seem to be using their size to their advantage in most cases.

The challenge for them (and I've given this unsolicited advice to Jonathan) is to figure out how they can synthesize having a platform + big set of customers using their own technology (eating their own dog food in their hosting center) and taking on more and more larger mainstream customers. Having a hosting business, on-prem business, multiple products like CCXML and VoiceXML in addition to ASR/TTS -- is a lot of be good at.

Certainly Voxeo isn't a Genesys size revenue company. However, I have seen personally a number of deals where they are beating Genesys (both sides with the addition of VoiceGenie) hands down. So, I think their somebody to pay attention to - both competitively and as a partner/customer.

Thanks,
Jeff

Re: Podcamp Atlanta kickoff

Jeff Haynie — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 19:49:33 -0000

Thanks for comment. Day one was great and a big success! Thanks for helping getting Podcamp going and your leadership Chris.

Re: Podcamp Atlanta Day one

Jeff Haynie — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 21:27:50 -0000

Thanks for stopping by Amber. Shouldn't you be asleep already? :)

The venue was fabulous - don't get me wrong. Great pick. It's impossible to know these things as an organizer ahead of time. It really was a beautiful place.

Re: Going to Google

Jeff Haynie — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 11:26:47 -0000

Definitely an April Fool's Joke! :)

Re: App Forge = -1

Jeff Haynie — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 18:39:00 -0000

Yea... I know it really sucks. I'm working on a brand new, cleaner interface and hope to have it up in the next week or so.....

Re: App Forge = -1

Jeff Haynie — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 22:06:27 -0000

Carlos - unfortunately, I'm not sure there's anyone you can sue in this case unless you have something in your contract that provides for some sort of action in case of insolvency -- which I'd be surprised if you do. This is the nature of dealing with the reality of business - both large companies and small. Good luck, maybe Oracle will provide some support for existing customers...

Re: We need a local Y-Combinator

Jeff Haynie — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 10:41:59 -0000

@P Wingard -

Hard to say since it depends on several factors: (a) type of business (b) stage of business (formation, alpha product, making money trying to grow, etc) and (c) what you want (money, expertise, connections, etc).

The Atlanta VC market is weak - however, there is plenty of money around town. And plenty of smart and experienced people in the community wanting to help entrepreneurs. And there are angels. Additionally, there is ATDC which is a good startup resource if you meet their profile.

If you email me offline with some more ideas above I can try and point you in a direction.

Re: Let’s go to Six Flags and mingle

Jeff Haynie — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:22:10 -0000

Sounds like this event is on-hold according to Sherry. Looks like they couldn't secure the venue and are now looking for a different location. I guess the name will have to change as well. :)

Re: Raising venture capital in the southeast

Jeff Haynie — Fri, 04 May 2007 21:08:58 -0000

Hey Knox,

I'm honored to have one of the best known angel investor's reading my blog (and even commenting!).

Of course, I failed to mention that the best kept secret to southeast venture funding are our "angels" -- literally. Our local angels have always been the first to invest, the longest to stay with the entrepreneur and usually the first to get "squashed" as later stage investors come along.

I plan on posting an entry soon that focuses on our angels and what they're up, what they're interested in and how to find them.

Thanks for stopping by Knox and thanks, personally, for your past support.

Jeff

Re: Why don’t southeastern VCs blog?

Jeff Haynie — Thu, 10 May 2007 09:33:08 -0000

Thanks to David for a few small clarifications about Pardot. Sounds like he's spread the love to some different schools and he's using a Rails knock-off called Symfony.

Re: Why don’t southeastern VCs blog?

Jeff Haynie — Thu, 10 May 2007 21:57:15 -0000

Thank Alan,

You're probably the perfect example of what I think we need more of in Atlanta in terms of VC bloggers. While I understand your concern about self-promotion - especially given Noro's classic self-deprecating professional investor brand - i think it actually cuts both ways. We need more "smart VCs" who get it - who are more vocal through blogging - who can talk about the exciting things that are going on, interesting investments they're making, things they're looking to get interested in and what's not working well. The transparency in my mind is part of what's occurring in other areas impacted by blogging - and which could really benefit the entrepreneur/venture community. It's a symbiotic relationship as you're well aware of. If more enterepreneurs could have "access" to you - maybe not directly - but indirectly through your public blog about what you're doing (as it relates to your professional investing) -- it could help provide context and instruction. Also, it would provide a wonderful medium for people to interact with you in a more controlled way in which you probably can't do in other mediums easily.

Self-promotion without value is meaningless. However, in the southeast US we need more meaningful dialog about what is happening. Evidence from today's ATDC $1B celebration shows us that there are interesting things happening. Sometimes, it's hard to find out about who's doing what.

So -- my challenge to the local VC community - which I dearly respect: start blogging.

Here's my public challenge. I'd like to see the following at least start a blog and post one meaningful article related to venture capital and what they're interested in:

<ul>
<li>Stephen Fleming, Chief Commercialization Officer, GT Venture Labs</li>
<li>Alan Taetle, Partner, Noro-Moseley (YOU!)</li>
<li>Fred Sturgis, Partner, HIG</li>
<li>Knox Massey, Atlanta Technology Angels</li>
<li>Sig Mosley, Imlay Investments</li>
</ul>

And here's my offer: I'll help in anyway I can - set up the blog, provide the hosting, find the templates - even help give some tips on how I do it.

NO excuses now. :)

Re: How to improve ATDC

Jeff Haynie — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:02:00 -0000

Thanks for your comments Clark. It's encouraging to hear from other angels about what's needed to better our local community. I think action is the key to some of this.

Also, re: Open Source vs. Closed Source. Good ideas about TAG, MIT Forum. There's always lots of debate and education (and confusion) around some of these topics that more conversation about them would be helpful so everyone has the complete picture of what the alternatives are.

Re: Ruby on Rails Envy

Jeff Haynie — Fri, 18 May 2007 09:37:02 -0000

Hey Nate, why not live blog some of the conference for us slackers who couldn't make it out?

Lance, c'mon. That's a loaded question of which I will blog about today.

Re: Mahalo - Social search invented

Jeff Haynie — Thu, 31 May 2007 20:37:19 -0000

I followed ChaCha early on when it launched last year. However, the editorial input isn't really obvious in the results. Quite frankly, I can't tell much difference between a ChaCha results page and one from Google - except that Google is better in my opinion.

Where I think social networking could play into this over time is when social guides become people part of your social network. Much like del.cio.us has done for social bookmarking. Sure, that's not something that would make sense today - but I can definitely imagine something where some of the content is generated/contributed/rated/etc based not on some "expert" but someone that you give trust to.

Let me give a simple example. I "trust" Michael Arrington and Om Malik as sources for my Web2.0 news. Are they always perfect? No. Are they sometimes wrapped up in specific geographies (like the valley)? Sure. But, I implicitly given them "trust" - even though neither know me and even though they haven't asked me to give it to them.

Now, expand that out a bit. I bet everyone has their implicit "trust list" of people they go to based on some implicit expert categorization they do mentally. If you could capture that and the harness the power of this - and combine it with our everyday online (and offline) lives - it would create something very powerful.

I'll have to create a post dedicate to some of my expanded thoughts around this .... stay tuned.

Re: Mahalo - Social search invented

Jeff Haynie — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 09:48:30 -0000

Points well given and taken. Maybe the problem is the notion of it being a search engine over a social directory.

I view this as a more intelligent and practical wikipedia (although the information is somewhat different) than a pure search engine.

I do think there's value in finding a more well designed place that aggregates useful and verified information in one place (for certain topics) than a pure search engine.

For example, in research for an article on the IPhone, Mahalo gives me one place to go to find some of the important information and links to resources in one quick find. However, the iphone search at google will give me a less consolidated, less filtered view.

The scaling problem is a problem for sure, but I think can be also tackled algorithmically over time as well by making the job of creating new information pages and integrating better secondary recommendations from search terms that don't match.

Re: Mashup your pictures into awesome videos

Jeff Haynie — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 21:02:12 -0000

Hey Blake,
It's very fast. I spent about 2 minutes choosing the pictures and the track and it took about 5-6 minutes to generate the video.
Jeff

Re: Cross-browser way to dynamically load javascript

Jeff Haynie — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 21:12:44 -0000

If you need async behavior, you would put code in the onLoadFunction.

We also occassionally load JS code via AJAX but it's also asynchronous (although the eval is sync) - and you also potentially have a cross-domain issue since you cannot eval code from a different domain - thus you'll need to use the above type of behavior.

Flickr actually provides a JSON script based API where you can invoke Flickr and it will invoke a pre-defined callback JS function which is invoked to to pass in the data.

As far as scoping, that's a general problem with loading JS code period in a browser. By default, all JS variables in a flat scope. You will have the same issues in AJAX - unless you change the scope.

In javascript you can do this with something like:

myfunction.call(pointer,arg);

Where pointer is an object you want to be the value of this when myfunction is invoked. You can also pass multiple arguments using:

myfunction.apply(pointer,[arg1,arg2]);

In our framework, we rarely (unless we want a global scope which is very rare) using globally scoped variables. We also put all variables in a user-defined scope.

This can be done with something like:

var MyScope = {};

MyScope.varName = 1;

Or in prototype, you can do the nicer:

var MyScope = Class.create();
MyScope.varName = 1;

Re: Final details for Barcamp Atlanta

Jeff Haynie — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:38:07 -0000

Yes - good catch. Thanks!

Re: Barcamp Atlanta - the night after

Jeff Haynie — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 00:09:56 -0000

It was very good. Lots of very interesting topics and passionate geeks. Only fun can come from that... :)

Re: Dell is not small business friendly

Jeff Haynie — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 23:33:09 -0000

OK -- here's an interesting update:

On friday morning, I received a call from an executive at Dell to discuss the situation. He was very professional, very understanding and seemed to get customer service. I explained the situation in detail and replayed the events for him. He was obviously adept at understanding how to deal with delicate customer issues like this.

He asked me a good deal of questions - but had done a bunch of research on me such as my blog and my Linked In profile (is that a good thing now I'm thinking?). We talked about my company and then we talked about the problem of fraud that manufacturers like Dell are experience. It sounds horrible and a very high percentage of orders. That sucks.

He then made good on the order - and even discounted the order a good bit to make it worth my while. Going into it - I was adamant that I wouldn't order even if they offered to give it to me. But, after the long conversation - he built a rapport with me and a relationship - and he won me over. That's good customer experience. It's about the relationship.

So, they shipped the order yesterday. I must say that I'm impressed.

Dell showed 2 things: (1) how one person in your company can really affect an overall impression and (2) how one person in your company can really affect the overall impression.

Luckily, they are smart enough to monitor this type of stuff and try and follow-up on it. Good for them. This time, they have won me over. For that, I'll definitely order from them again.

Re: Setup your phone system in less than 12 hours

Jeff Haynie — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:42:56 -0000

Wow, that sucks and I'm sorry. I'll pass that info along to the CEO.

Re: Cross-browser way to dynamically load javascript

Jeff Haynie — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:51:03 -0000

Kayhadrin- Unfortunately, we found in safari 2 we have to use a timer. Only way it seems to work.

Andy- yes, you'll need to append it to your DOM head.

I'll try and re-post later tonight a more up-to-date version of this code.

Re: Cross-browser way to dynamically load javascript

Jeff Haynie — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 02:05:12 -0000

OK, if you're reading this article by now and trying to do this yourself - you should check out Appcelerator.

You shouldn't be trying to write cross-browser javascript stuff like this anymore - plenty of great stuff out there that does it all for you, cross browser.

(I'll still try and update the code above here ASAP in case you want to be brave)

Re: D-Link’s terrible firmware upgrade experience

Jeff Haynie — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:40:33 -0000

this is a professional product by a very big company that's done in English. If you can't do the simple things you can't do complicated things.

The whole point of this post however wasn't about spelling errors -- THE PRODUCT DIDN'T WORK. Read my article entirely and you'll see that. Regardless of the spelling errors, it didn't work. And, by the way, if the product worked i wouldn't have ever noticed the spelling errors most likely.

I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say "I finally confessed your own stupidity".

You obviously didn't read my article. Do you work for D-LINK?

I wrote this article well over 18 months ago. Since then, I've been using my Apple airport and I haven't yet restarted it --- yeah, 18 months later. I'm not even sure I've even looked at the admin since I first set it up. That's a really product.

Re: Cross-browser way to dynamically load javascript

Jeff Haynie — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:03:52 -0000

You'll need to pull out the Javascript using a regular expression and then set the innerHTML property and then in a timeout invoke the javascript code. You can't just set innerHTML (which you've found out) to make this happen.

Prototype has a little utility when you call Element.update that will do this for you.

Reference doc at : http://www.prototypejs.org/api/element/update

Re: D-Link’s terrible firmware upgrade experience

Jeff Haynie — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 17:13:50 -0000

Maybe this is "splitting hairs"...

In Canada and the U.K., 'licence' is the noun and 'license' the verb. In the U.S. both are 'license'.

However, I think from the point of what I've seen in the ui, they aren't using UK English.

I'll concede that this "mis-spelling" could be a non-mispelling, it was one the only one, others were more blatant.

End the end, the product and the experience -- SUCKED.

Since I've written this article - I only had one outage from my Airport: when I unplugged it to plug in the new 1TB Time Machine enabled version. :)

Re: Barcamp Atlanta registration now open

Jeff Haynie — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:45:53 -0000

oops. you're right, fixed. :)

Re: Learn how to program in Ajax from the experts

Jeff Haynie — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:46:27 -0000

Yeah, misworded Wil. I meant to say "PHP" framework. But then again, you are "the PHP company". :)

See you next week!

Re: Let someone tell you how much your pitch sucks

Jeff Haynie — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:10:36 -0000

Ivo... coming very soon. We're going to be doing a lot more video. :)

Re: Learn how to program in Ajax from the experts

Jeff Haynie — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:36:43 -0000

Sorry Fred. We took down the Atlanta portion because the training has already passed (was sept 18th). We will likely have another training there in the spring. We can also offer direct training as well. Let me know if you want more details...

Re: Introducing TestMonkey

Jeff Haynie — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:56:52 -0000

@alan - selenium is a good product. if you use selenium you should consider the open source push to test stuff as well. we're just going to be doing some things that are different - in some cases maybe it will overlap, in some cases it will be very complementary.

@roy - yeah, it's not just for testing JS and in fact, it's really primarily designed for testing out the UI (like HTML, etc).

Re: Introducing TestMonkey

Jeff Haynie — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:01:52 -0000

@itod -- thanks. i like the idea of putting it at the end, will make that optional. we can also just basically check and see if the first param is typeof object and assume it's not provided too....

Re: Introducing TestMonkey

Jeff Haynie — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:08:42 -0000

@matt - thanks. we don't have the CI build pieces in yet but they will overlay and we should have something in place for that soon. we have a lot of additional automation capabilities we're going to be introducing soon....

Re: Common Misconceptions

Jeff Haynie — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:31:37 -0000

It was a pleasure meeting with you and working with you as a founder of Startup Weekend Atlanta / Skribit.

I thought you did an outstanding job of helping guide us and kick our butts occasionally and thought you did perfect.

It was a blast!

Re: Unconferences in Business Week

Jeff Haynie — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:01:39 -0000

This is the first year I was invited to FooCamp and I'm excited, especially after helping organize SoCon07 and sponsoring Podcamp Atlanta this year. Once you attend an "unconference" your view of a conference changes. I went to a business conference afterwards and it was almost impossible to "go with the flow".

Re: Why I Dont Visit Second Life

Jeff Haynie — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 09:46:27 -0000

oh my that is entirely too true. how funny.