Category Archives: Internet

Why I won’t be voting for Ayanna Pressley

On July 29, I received an unsolicited bulk email message from Ayanna Pressley, a candidate for one of the Boston City Council’s At-Large seats, with the Subject line, “Our Campaign Kick-Off for Boston City Council At Large!”  The email message to which it was sent (I use different email addresses for different purposes to make… Read More »

Citizens Bank screws the pooch on weekend “upgrade”

Citizens Bank “upgraded” their online banking site over the past two weekends. This morning, when I attempted to log in, here’s what I experienced: 30 seconds to load the initial login page 72 seconds to load the identity verification page (i.e., “you’re using a computer without one of our cookies already in its browser cache,… Read More »

Now Google Maps is right, but MBTA Trip Planner is still wrong

I was delighted to discover a few days ago that the problem with the MBTA’s on-line route data that I’ve been trying to get the T to fix for over six years and almost got arrested over is now fixed in Google Maps. Alas, it’s still wrong in the MBTA’s own Trip Planner. Go figure.

Tiggit Mail: Good program, great author

I recently set out to find a decent IMAP client for my BlackBerry Bold, since although the BlackBerry has native IMAP support, my employer’s IT department has disabled it. I found two to consider: LogicMail, which is free, and Tiggit Mail, which costs $30.  Both are under active development.  I evaluated them and found them both… Read More »

VMware does email marketing right

I just got an email message from VMware which began as follows: Thank you for your past interest in VMware. As part of our routine scheduled maintenance, we will be removing email addresses and associated subscription information from our marketing database for contacts who have not updated their profile and/or subscription preferences within the last… Read More »

Web site pet peeves

ZIP code fields that don’t accept the ZIP+4, or only accept it without the hyphen, or only accept it with the hyphen, or let you enter it and then tell you it’s invalid Credit-card number fields that don’t accept spaces or hyphens, or require spaces or hyphens, or tell you to enter the card number… Read More »

Spam Yoon

In a recent email message to me entitled “Fighting the Good Fight,” friend, author and politician Michael Burstein referred me to Kate Hutchinson’s blog entry about spamming by Sam Yoon.  Michael is an avid reader of my blog and therefore knows that I’ve been in more than a few scraps of my own like Kate’s. … Read More »