Top Reason Why You Should NOT Use Microsoft Exchange in Your Business

Today, I sent a message to a company through their contact page on their website. It is a standard contact page, i.e., you need to fill in your contact information and the details of your request, and they will follow up with you later. An hour later, I received a reply from them, saying that they would like more information from me. Therefore, I reply to their email. Few seconds later, I got the following:

Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists:

[email protected]
Your message wasn't delivered because of security policies. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. Please provide the following diagnostic text to your system administrator.
Sent by Microsoft Exchange Server 2007


Diagnostic information for administrators:

....

(Another 100 lines of error messages)

Initially, I thought I made a mistake when typing the email address. Therefore, I redid it and verified every single letter in the email address. Unfortunately, I got the same message again. After trying it for 5 times, I gave up, and this company loses a sale.

There are few things we’ve learned here. First, never display very technical error messages to the customers. They are very boring for non-engineers. Second, don’t assume that every customer is patient. Not every one is willing to re-send the same email for 5 times. Third, it takes many years to build a city but it only takes few hours to destroy it. With today’s technology, it is too easy to spread out the bad words.

I think this is not a right way to run a custom request management system (or ticket system). It should never yell to the customer. Instead, it should let the stuffs to evaluate the customer’s reply rather than letting the Microsoft Exchange Server to do it.

I don’t recommend using Microsoft Exchange for your business. It just hurts your business.

–Derrick

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A letter to Microsoft Internet Explorer Development Team

Dear Microsoft Internet Explorer Development Team,

Would you like to take the source of Firefox (or any browser besides Internet Explorer) and call it Internet Explorer 11?

Thanks.

–Derrick

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Copycat is the royal road to success

After Google followed Bing to put the wallpaper on their page, its stock price has grown up for $8.31 in about 90 minutes today.

Update an hour after the post: It seems that the stock price has something to do with the quality of the wallpaper:

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Recharge the battery using Wi-Fi signal, does it worth it?

Today I read an article about Airnergy, a product developed by RCA to recharge the portable device using Wi-Fi signal. I think the idea is pretty interesting because wireless power(not battery power) is a main research area in the next 20 years.

Here is the link to the article:
RCA Airnergy claims to charge gadgets using ambient WiFi signals

I think the comment from Gruph Norgle is pretty interesting:

In the EU the maximum legal Wifi transmission power is 100 milliwatts, however, on average 802.11 devices transmit at 50mw. Now in accordance with the inverse square law, at a distance of 5 meters, the power is reduced to 1 / (5^2) * 50mw = 2mw. Two milliwatts at 5 meters. Assuming they have a respectable electrodynamic induction efficiency of 75%, they will be able to convert 75% of that 2 milliwatts back into electricity: 1.5 milliwatts.

It takes 50 times that to power a single LED. This means that if their internal battery is 3 volts, 3000mAh it will take about 5000 hours to charge it to full capacity.

So, how long does an iPhone battery(3.7V, 1400mAh) get fully charged from zero?

Required power = 3.7V * 1400mAh = 5.18Wh
Supplied power = 1.5mW = 0.0015W
Hour to get fully charged = 5.18 /0.0015 = 3453.33 hours = 4.72 months

4.72 months??!!

–Derrick

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Updated: What technologies (or toys) I am playing recently?

Recently I am playing the following technologies (toys):

  1. Tornado Web – Not sure how long will Apache + PHP last. Time to learn Python.
  2. Tokyo Cabinet & Tyrant – Another one of my long term plans to step away from SQL.
  3. PHP API for Tokyo Tyrant — I decide to write my own because I cannot find a good one.
  4. Moving my development platform from Windows to FreeBSD. My servers have been already on FreeBSD for many years. I think now is a good time to move my desktop systems to FreeBSD as well. Why not Linux? Oh Well…
  5. LUA – I may pick up Lua if time is permitted.

Looks like I will have a busy time other than shoveling the snow this Winter.

–Derrick

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It’s a pain to use Godaddy.com’s coupon!

Godaddy.com was running a sale today: $1.99 a domain name (Coupon Code: GEO199, no other purchase is necessary) for the first year. This is a very good deal so I decide to grab four domains from them. The pain began:

1. I couldn’t use the coupon code for four domains in the same order…

» Fine. I split the order into four. I didn’t have any problem on my first order.

2. I couldn’t use the coupon code on the same user account…

» Fine. I registered a new user account and tried again.

3. I couldn’t use the coupon code on the same browser…

» Fine. I cleaned up the cache and tried again.

4. I couldn’t use the coupon code from the same IP…

» Fine. I tried using a different IP…

5. I couldn’t use the coupon code with the same credit card…

» Fine. I tried using a different credit card…

6. Finally, I got four domains for $7.96. It’s a good deal but it already spent me half an hour.

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The Flying Saucer Balloon at Colorado

Why no one thought about taking a picture of the flying balloon using infra-red camera? The Raytheon one should do the work.

Click here to read the ridiculous story.

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UPS Mail Innovations – Next generation logistics operated by elephants or snails.

Why it took 2 days(48 hours) to transport a package from point A to point B by UPS Mail Innovations, which is only a 30 minutes drive, or a 6 hours walk?

Apparently, this next generation and innovative logistics service is either operated by elephants or snails.

UPS Mail Innovations - Next generation logistics operated by elephants or snails.

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Shit is priced differently in different region.

I was experimenting the salary search engine at Indeed.com today, and I found some interesting result…

“The salaries of Shit in different locations in US”

Here is the result:

indeed-shit

Or you can try to click here to repeat the test….

What makes me couldn’t stop laughing is the statistical conclusion below…

Average shit salaries for job postings in New York, NY are 68% higher than average shit salaries for job postings in Hawaii.

Does it mean a shit worth more value in NYC than in Hawaii?

The reason why I want to put this interesting result is not for making fun on Indeed.com, but I want to understand why the QA at Indeed did not notice this bug, and why the engineer of this search engine is using such a poor algorithm? I am pretty sure NO job has the keyword “shit” in the job title! Where did the search engine get this information? How does it get these numbers?

Do you think your salary is high enough? Try to compare your salary with the result using these keywords: Unemployed and Do Nothing.

indeed-unemployed

Want to know the solution and prevent this embarrassing result? Shoot me an email and we can talk.
(It will require you sometime to find out my email but it is not that hard, huh?)

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