Many times I read on the Geekzone forums about bad customer services, and I have posted here in this blog some of my own experiences as well.

As usual I also try to bring balance by posting about my good experiences... As my latest encounter with Belkin's Customer Service.

About a year ago I purchased a Belkin 800VA Universal UPS. Great product, works as advertised and I was so happy that I decided to purchase a second unit - the Belkin 1200VA Universal UPS. The idea was to be able to connect all the remaining equipment in the home office - the Apple iMac, a LAN switch, the router, and the cordless phones connected to my SPA 2102 VoIP gateway to those two UPS.


By chance the old Belkin 800VA faulted just a couple of hours after I've placed my order on-line for the second larger unit! So I had to run my whole office from the mains for a day, until I got the 1200VA unit. But in the meantime I contacted Belkin support to ask how to proceed with the older UPS, now dead as a dodo...

And here comes the good thing: after a few e-mails (very quick replies!) Belkin arranged to have a replacement unit sent - and it has just arrived, exactly a week after my first e-mail was sent. There was no confusion on what, how, where - and I now have to simply post the faulty unit back.

That's right, Belkin first solved my problem, then worried about having the faulty unit back.

Now, if some of the telcos in Australia and New Zealand could learn customer services from these guys...

Remember to enjoy your next twelve hours long haul flights from Auckland to San Francisco, or from Sydney to London.

If things are going the way Airbus wants, soon people will be able to send and receive voice calls and SMS on board of aeroplanes.

This is so wrong... Can you imagine if you just happens to sit next to someone shouting instructions to their managers, or participating on a conference call, or simply having a few "beep" every time someone sends or receive a SMS?

People trying to sleep with all that background noise is already bad. It's gonna get worse. We will soon see "Non Smoking, Non Mobile Phones" flights being announced...

It is going to be hell on air.

It's true. Fake Steve Jobs is funny. But calling Nokia "a bunch of filthy Swedes" (Nokia is a Finnish company) and writing that Lisbon is in Lebanon (Lisbon is the Portuguese capital, 3,000 miles from Lebanon) just helps to add to the stereotype many have that Americans don't know anything outside their borders.

Well, we don't even know if Fake Steve Jobs is based in the U.S. anyway...

I've just received a tip for a short (five min) movie called The Shape of Phones showing the thinking behind Motorola design, development, and testing of mobile phones.

Interesting view of "sizes". When is a milimeter large or small?

I think there must be a wave of new users arriving on the Internets. I say this because in the last few months I have received a series of disturbing e-mails, at least one a day, but sometimes more.

Those e-mails are disturbing because they show more people are using the tubes withouth really realising what it is and how it works.

Some people can't distinguish between Interent domains for example, and how they relate to companies. Here at Geekzone I receive e-mails that clearly should be directed to Vodafone New Zealand, Telecom New Zealand, and other companies:

[name removed] from Inglewood, New Zealand contacted Geekzone.

Notes: Please note new change of address
[address removed]
Please send account to this new address

[name removed] from Palmerston North, NZ contacted Geekzone.
Notes: My contract is No [removed]
I have had my cell phone stolen/go missing. I understand that the policy includes an insurance policy that covers this.

who do I see un PN to obtain a replacement?? Can you also send me a copy of the contract? I do not seem to hae one, noy sure but I cannot remember getting one.

Phone my father on 027 [removed] if you wish to discuss anything.

[name removed] from Upper Hutt, New Zealand contacted Geekzone.
Notes: your site tells me my password is incorrect.Cant get my emails.please sort it

[name removed] from Christchurch, NZ contacted Geekzone.
Notes: Slingshot webmail is crap!It is sooooooo slloooooow to do ANYTHING!!!!!!!! It takes a minute or
more to delete something or change a page!!!!! FRUSTRATING FRUSTRATING!!!! I used to use incredimail
which is way quicker and user friendly (Now there's a thought!) I was meant to change to outlook express but that doesn't bloody work at all. So I'm stuck with your crap site!!
I've had this problem for  a week and usually have to be on hole for an hr to ring through. NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!!!

[name removed] from AUCKLAND, NZ contacted Geekzone.
Notes: my account no [removed] mobile no [removed] for vodem. please note my change of address as follows.
[address removed] Papakura. Auckland.  Please acknowledge via email or post.

[name removed] from Auckland, New Zealand contacted Geekzone.
Notes: The above account has been disconnected - but account was paid on 11 May 2007 by Direct Credit.
This is a business phone and most important that it is reconnected immediately.   Please advise. cellphone # is 021 [number removed].

[name removed] from Auckland, NZ contacted Geekzone.
Notes: We have not received our Vodafone statement for May 07. This could delay payment.DPGT

[company name removed] from Auckland, New Zealand contacted Geekzone.
Notes: Would a customer services representative phone our land line on 09 [number removed] to organise a cancellation of part of our account no: [account removed].
[name removed]

[name removed] Group Limited from Wellington, NZ contacted Geekzone.
Notes: Could someone please contact me on my mobile phone number.  Sarah [name removed] was our accounts person who has now left.  I have been trying for over a months now to make contact with someone but keep being fobbed off, even when going into Thorndon Quay office I was told no one was available. 
I have a problem that needs to be sorted and quite frankly am sick of chasing you guys round for some very simple answers.

[name] from auckland, nz contacted Geekzone.
Notes: please disconect  my dial up connection .my customer number is [removed].
invoice no. [removed] .thank u for service.

Notes: Hi.My name is [name removed].
[full address removed]
PH. [mobile phone removed]
Email [email address removed]
I ordered a phone 19/05/07.Can you tell me if you recieved this order and when will it arrive?
Order No.[removed]
Code 010444.
Samsung Z400V-Black.
I paid by BNZ Visa.
$99.00 incl. Gst & delivery.
I recieved an Email confirming this order 19/05/07,but nothing since.

Mrs CJ [name removed] from Wellington, NZ contacted Geekzone.
Notes: I want to speak to someone at Vodafone about a billing error and it is impossible to get a real person.  Could you please get someone to contact me ASAP.  I do not want my service restricted as threatened by Vodafone text received today 29/05/07.

Thank you

I read somewhere that many people "browse by Google", basically ignoring the address bar in their browsers, and going directly to The Google, entering a company name in the search box, visiting the first result (or any result on that page). I think this is what happens when people contact me with some requests:

This is an interesting phenomenon, because it started happening more and more since October 2006, when broadband prices dropped and this kind of service became more accessible in the country.

Another possibility is that people are simply sick of trying to talk to their service providers. It looks like they can't get through Vodafone or Telecom's call centre, the stores are of no help and so on. In this case these e-mails also show the current status of customer services in New Zealand.

Google AdWords Business Pages has just been introduced in New Zealand, providing a free webpage for businesses that place advert through Google AdWords, but don't have a web site yet. As Lance Wiggs wrote when commenting on this service:

Of course if you are a business without a webpage, you may not even know what google is… and you certainly wouldn’t be reading this or Geekzone, where I found the report.

Exactly my point. Providing the technology is great, but we need to make it easy for people to understand and use it.

Rod Drury is fighting the right fight for a better broadband infrastructure in New Zealand. But shouldn't we be also thinking about helping whoever is going to be using this?

Well said by Peter:

While multi-billion dollar proposals are on the table across the Tasman for the construction of a national fibre-to-the-node network, with our own Telecom joining the G9 proposal for an A$3.6 billion ($NZ4.1 billion) build-out, moves are also afoot to improve Australia's international capacity.

But as Juha at Geekzone points out, Telstra's planned 9000km fibre link between Australia and the US, which is to be built by French equipment maker Alcatel, won't link up New Zealand.

So here we have our largest telco chipping in to fibre Australia while its creaking infrastructure back home struggles to serve up broadband for our existing needs and our second-ranked telco TelstraClear is bypassing a fantastic opportunity to improve international bandwidth capacity for the country.

Telstra seemed like the ideal contender when it came to the prospect of a second cable crossing the Tasman. Now that looks like it is out of the question, are there any other players who would see a business case for laying a new cable?

Unlikely. It's yet another sign, the ditching of its Tauranga mobile network being the other, that Telstra isn't fully committed to the New Zealand market.

A friend of mine, Hubert Nguyen, has just pinged on Messenger to let me know about his latest work, GPUGems 3 - and it looks cool:

We are pleased to unveil the cover of the upcoming “GPU Gems 3” book. This image has been rendered in NVIDIA’s “Human Head” demo, which features Doug Jones, who recently starred as the Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

The book will be in full color, hard cover, and will contain 41 chapters, including “Advanced Skin Rendering”, which explains how to render ultra-realistic characters. GPU Gems 3 will be released at SIGGRAPH 2007 but can already be pre-ordered.

According to Hubert, "... the book basically contains 41 GPU-related techniques - there's some rendering stuff, image processing, general purpose computing, physics."

I wrote about the New Zealand Daylight Saving Time changes before, and today the Department of Internal Affairs sent out this press release:

The Department of Internal Affairs has written to key IT providers reminding them about this year's change to daylight saving.

The Minister of Internal Affairs, Rick Barker, announced in April that the period of daylight saving was being extended to 27 weeks.  From this year, daylight saving will start on the last Sunday in September and end on the first Sunday in April the following year.  Accordingly, the next period of daylight saving will start on Sunday 30 September 2007 (when 2:00am becomes 3:00am) and end on Sunday 6 April 2008 (when 3:00am becomes 2:00am). 

The only change is to the length of the period of daylight saving (daylight time).  Daylight time is still one hour in advance of New Zealand standard time, and in the Chatham Islands, daylight time is still one hour and 45 minutes in advance of New Zealand standard time. 

Deputy Secretary Keith Manch says IT providers will want to test their systems with the required changes before daylight saving commences on 30 September. 

"We will follow up with a reminder to the regulators of the key sectors affected by the change to daylight saving, such as health and banking, recommending that they contact their IT providers about changes to programmes and any testing needs they have," Keith Manch said.

So go on, please read my previous post about this issue. If you work in New Zealand, or your IT organisation is based here, or you have some IT infrastructure in this country you should be aware of this.

Who would have thought that Netscape Navigator is still alive? The browser that started it all is available in a new version, incorporating social features such as sharing and voting for webpages, friends links and RSS feed support.

Want to have an insight on Netscape? Just read this bit about Netscape Navigator on Wikipedia:

Netscape Navigator, also known as Netscape, was a proprietary web browser that was popular during the 1990s. Once the flagship product of Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant browser in usage share, its user base had almost completely evaporated by 2002, partly due to the inclusion of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser with the Windows operating system, but also due to lack of significant innovation after the late 1990s.

Netscape wasn't the first browser, being inspired on Mosaic browser. But it was the one that made the world wide web popular.

Popular during the 90s! Back by popular demand? I don't think so. I remember using Netscape Navigator 1.0 (screenshot) on my Windows 3.11 for Workgroups install, back in 1995.

You can download old versions of Netscape as well on their archives, but only back to version 4.0.

I have now create a page for my linkblog. I will share interesting posts I find through my RSS feeds, but I don't have the time to post a complete comment - so I will simply tag it and share with you.

I will be "feeding" it while working through my feeds (which is probably half of my work day). So bookmark it and keep coming back.

There's no RSS feed for that yet, since it's a single page listing all those interesting articles. I will create a feed for that later.

Enjoy the reading!