Isle of Skype

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, November 6, 2022.

Isle of Skype

There are things I still sort of like about Skype. I use it a lot for video calls (although for work and muti-party video it's pretty much all about Google Hangouts these days). I have a Philips phone that integrates with Skype for international calls (they seem to have discontinued it, and while the calls are cheap the UI is baroque). But the IM is horrible. It can't remember which messages you've seen between devices and so you're constantly trying to figure out what you have and haven't read.

And the IM on the desktop is nothing compared to the horror of the Skype Android app. This slowly spins up and by the time it's loaded previous messages your battery is dead.

Imo.im made Skype IM tolerable on Android and possible on a Chromebook. In the last week it seems that Skype has kneecapped them and blocked their servers from signing in. I'm limping by with IM+ Pro at the moment, but it's slow and buggy and frustrating.

I sympathize with Imo.im. I've been stiffed by Skype before as an officially sanctioned partner so it's no shock that they'd take out this kind of tool.

It would be nice if they could fix mobile and web access to the network first though.

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Really BA?

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Thursday, November 12, 2015.

Really BA?

Not to pick on British Airways but yes, that screenshot is real. It's a marketing email opt out that has not only been pre-populated in favor of spam but has then also been disabled.

Previously.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Really BA? #etc #ba A British Airways marketing opt-out checkbox that is both pre-checked and disabled for your convenience. )

etc, ba

Thank you Feedly

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Friday, May 22, 2020.

Thank you Feedly

It has been brought to my attention that I've been whinging too much recently

So I'd like to take a break from that and say how much I'm enjoying feedly. It's a wonderfully well designed RSS reader. I use the Chrome Extension version and the Android app. It preserves the Google Reader keyboard shortcuts so I can sail through my subscriptions and it brings back social sharing. 

I looked at feedly once before and didn't really get it. I thought it was just one of those algorithmic recommendation news manglers that tries to guess what you want to read. It might do that on the home page but the 'All' view is a perfect replacement for Google Reader. 

I love it. I want to pay for it to make sure it stays around. Thank you feedly. 

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Thank you Feedly #etc #feedly #software Feedly is an awesome RSS reader and the ideal replacement for Google Reader for RSS fans. )

Might there actually be grounds to sue BA on the basis of a frequent flyer program that never lets you actually fly anywhere ever?

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, October 23, 2022.

Comments Restored

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, November 6, 2022.

I've restored all the comments that vanished after I removed Disqus last weekend. This is after a considerable effort to get everything out of BlogML and into WXR a couple of years ago. At some point I'll just have to give up and decide it's faster to write my own blogging and commenting system but for now Facebook Comments are enabled for all posts.

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Google Maps Ate My Battery

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Friday, May 22, 2020.

Google Maps Battery Usage

I've been slowly becoming aware that Google Maps is eating up a lot of the power on my phone (an HTC One X with Android 4.1). Yesterday as my battery was near death I saw it was up to 25% of total usage on a day when I hadn't even run the app. Something had to give. I'd already turned off Google Latitude a few months ago so the culprit had to be whatever secret-squirrel location sniffing the phone does behind my back.

Android Location Options

Android has about a million different incomprehensible weasily location options. At least in 4.1, I've seen some evidence that 4.2 is a bit better. The bargain with 'Google's location service' seems to be that if you don't send your data to them they won't send it to you. At least I think so, the description changes when you check or uncheck the option. I've had this off for today and my battery has a lot more juice. It means that Google Now doesn't work, but so far that doesn't seem to be a loss. It might hurt other apps as well, but so far I care more about not having a dead phone at the end of the day.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Google Maps Ate My Battery #etc #google #maps #battery #location Android 4.1 on a HTC One X and how to get more life out of your battery if you can figure out the location settings. )

Disqust

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, September 5, 2021.

Disqust

I just discovered that Disqus started running adverts on my blog without permission. It's probably been going on for a little while and I should have paid more attention, sorry.

By 'without permission' I mean that I'm sure I clicked though and didn't read a terms of service document that said they could do what the fuck they like to my site. And reading other accounts of this issue I'm sure I filed without reading the email they sent out that mentioned this new 'feature' in passing. So in a legal sense they probably had all the permission they needed. In a moral sense they're switch-and-bait scum of the highest order. 

They should have made this feature opt-in and then sent out an email explaining it in detail. Some sites don't want to run ads. You could have non-commercial Creative Commons content on a site that is suddenly a commercial concern. 

It's a free service and at some point they need to make money, fine. If this had been presented as an option I might have considered it. If they wanted to charge for the service I'd probably have paid for it.

Instead I've disabled Disqus and hastily hacked in Facebook Comments which should be coming online as I write this post. 

A side effect of this is that all the existing comments are currently unavailable. I have an archive and will try to get them resurrected soon.

(Since writing this post I have also ditched Facebook comments and now have a fully home grown solution that I moderate by hand.)

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Disqust #etc #disqus #comments #facebook Disqus sneak in ads and so I rip out Discuss in favor of Facebook Comments and eventually my own system. )

Chiroopractoor

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Thursday, November 12, 2015.

Chiroopractoor

Google's use crime of a new compose window is going to become compulsory soon.

I suspect this is because it will soon be revealed that Google is rolling out a chain of high street Chiropractic facilities to treat the crick in everyone's neck from composing email in the bottom right hand corner of one's screen.

Either that or it's a bid for mobile dominance by forcing PC users to work in mobile screen sized portions of their screen until you just give up and use your phone.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Chiroopractoor #etc #google #gmail Why is Google trying to give me back pain with their latest Gmail redesign? )

bye, bye, Miss Deprecated API

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, May 22, 2021.

bye, bye, Miss Deprecated API

After my horrible experience with Cleat last year I'm finally pulling the plug on my remaining Twitter API projects. Twitter is switching off their v1 API soon and I'm still so sick of it that I'm not even going to upgrade existing products. If you used Follower then I'm sorry. If you liked my Twitter public timeline screensaver then you're odd, but I'm still sorry. I'll still tweet, I'm just staying clear of the API.

(Image is Fail Whale Pale Ale by Brian Cook.)

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(Published to the Fediverse as: bye, bye, Miss Deprecated API #etc #twitter I'm done with the Twitter API )

I can't post a single photo

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Thursday, November 12, 2015.

I can't post a single photo

You'd think Facebook or Twitter could scrape together a semi-functional Android client but apparently not.

Twitter has some size limit for photo uploads. In a sane world the client would resize a photo that was too large and just get on with it. Table stakes would be an error message. But no, it pretends everything is just peachy and then fails to upload. To post a photo to Twitter I have to remember to go into the camera settings and ratchet down the megapixels which I remember to do about never. 

Facebook used to work occasionally but now just dumps an ugly immobile progress bar that won't go away until I reboot the phone. 

Google+ probably works fine technically but if a photo is uploaded to a forest and there is nobody there to see it is that still in any sense counted as success?

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(Published to the Fediverse as: I can't post a single photo #etc #facebook #twitter Twitter and Facebook both failing to upload photos on Android (probably fixed now but still...) )