Will's Blog This is why you have internet filters

19Apr/100

If you can’t fix the internet in 30 days

Internet service has been out at my apartment since the middle of March but this isn't a story about a landlord not listening to its tenants. In fact the building owner, 512Realty sent a company to fix the problem shortly after the connection went out.

The problem ... the company has been working full days since then trying to 'fix' the problem and I think that given the amount of time they have spent, they are ripping off my landlord and even worse, making money at the expense of me having to go to a local coffee shop just to check email.

In the month since the internet died, they have managed to:
- Switch ISPs
- Install new antennas
- Install new hardware
- and still are at step 1 when it comes to the problem

In fact the hardware worked perfectly fine, I can connect to the router, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the solution was something really simple. However this company has decided that ripping people off and forcing residents to deal with the inconvenience is the proper way to deal with the issue. The company won't even give me a progress report to at least explain what the hell they're doing.

I'd love to name the company in this blog post so that any property manager in the Austin area can be sure to avoid them but I think they were a past client of a company I am associated with and I don't want that to be an issue. If you are an Austin area property manager, email me will.gallahue [at] gmail.com and I will let you know the company name.

29Nov/091

LinkedIn: Now 90 percent worthless

Linkedin recently began adding nofollow to outbound links on profiles. This essentially makes it nothing but an online repository for your resume and nothing else.

Some people use it, some people don't but the main value of the service to me was the dofollow links that passed anchor text to my sites. That's the only reason I have a profile on the site and the only reason its worth putting up with MLM/Contact Raiders/and all the other self-important people that are on the site.

Then all of a sudden LinkedIn decides that in order to curtail spam they should add nofollow to prevent people from creating fake profiles.

Big mistake.

I'd like to send their dev team a little email that goes something like this:

"Dear LinkedIn development team,

Rather than develop an algorithm to remove profiles based on very "spammy" keywords, you've made the incredibly stupid and shortsighted decision to add "nofollow" to profile links.

Have you ever googled the following strings:
site:linkedin.com viagra 10,500 results
site:linkedin.com levitra 7,920 results
site:linkedin.com cialis 7,090 results
site:linkedin.com online gambling 10,900 results
site:linkedin.com online casino 7,420 results

Look guys, I can't program to save my life and I don't want to knock you too much over this decision but whoever thought this was a good move (whether it was a person or team of people equally out of touch from reality) they should be fired immediately and their own Linkedin profiles need to have a big red disclaimer that says "DO NOT HIRE ME."

Sincerely,

The Internet"