Tag: internet_access

review

It is the WORLD Wide Web – not the US Wide Web

I was pitched another website to review again today – this happens regularly – some I review, some I ignore depending on how useful or interesting I think they are.

The site I was pitched today was Ugenie.com by someone calling themselves Archana – the fact that this person chose not to use their real name should have alerted me to the fact that this was going to be bad!

Ugenie's US-only website

Archana said in his/her email:

I really enjoyed reading through your blog, I thought perhaps, you might be interested in checking out the beta website of the place were i work -www.ugenie.com

You enjoyed reading through my blog, did you? Then why did you waste your time and mine pitching me a site which couldn’t possibly be of any use to me?

Ugenie.com is a price comparison site which is US only.

Hello? It is the World Wide Web – not the US Wide Web. We have running water, electricity and yes, even Internet access in countries outside of the US these days.

If you are pitching sites to bloggers, at least have the courtesy to only ask them to look over sites which may be of use/interest to them. And don’t lie about having looked over their site, even a cursory glance over my site would tell you that I am based in Ireland, not the US.

UPDATE:
Oops – Archana came back in the comments (below) and informed me that Archana is, in fact, his name – apologies for that Archana.

Technology

No reasons why Internet-based applications are a bad idea

Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller has written an article in News Forge called Three reasons why Internet-based applications are a bad idea . His arguments are basically:

  • Peering agreement falls apart – recently a peering agreement between two providers broke down and a lot of people were left without Internet access
  • Cut one line, cut off DSL – a phone line was cut in Florida recently cutting off Internet access for many people
  • Mysterious outages abound – a co-worker of Robin’s lost Internet access for a couple of hours recently

Basically, what Robin is saying is that online applications require Internet access and Internet access is not always reliable, therefore online applications are probably not a good idea.

Rubbish! If your electricity is cut off, you can’t use your PC. Does that mean desktop applications are a bad idea? Of course not. I would argue that online applications are a great idea and if your Internet access is not reliable – that’s a completely seperate issue. If your Internet access is dodgy, change to an ISP which is dependable or have a backup Internet access service available!