Totally Doodgical
A look at business, law and life from a technophile.
Time your Email Marketing Well
3One thing I’ve learned recently is that I become really annoyed with people who send their bulk email out at 4am. See I just a Motorola Droid and have been loving it. However, I also connected it to my work account. I like being able to respond to my clients quickly with an “I got it” or a “I’ll look it up” such that they know that I’m on their side.
But, if I forget to turn off my ringer – my phone would give a notification at 3am or 4am when some companies send out their bulk mail. I was not pleased
Guess what? I just opted out of emails that I had previously opted-in. All due to their poor timing. Merchantcircle – I’m looking at you.
There is another option for Droid users like me (or other android versions). I’m now using the app “locale” to shut my notifications off between 11:30pm and 6:30am. Its disappointing that I have to do that, but email marketers seem to be clueless. Seriously, consider whether anyone wants to receive email at 4am.
–Ben
Google Scholar now indexing and searching state and federal caselaw!
0Just found out that google took on the legal research industry. I’m interested to see how this pans out. Attorneys will still need to cite check to see if stuff is still good law. However many of the obnoxious $300 searches may be mostly a thing of the past.
Stay Tuned to Google Scholar
–Ben
Fix – Outlook 2007 won’t Search Tasks
0I don’t know what’s going on with Outlook’s Indexing, but it would miss tasks – even when I could see them by scrolling down by date. I had enough of it and disabled indexing. This forces Outlook to go back to the slow search method that actually works.
Here’s how you can do it
- Select Tools Menu item
- Select Instant Search submenu
- Select Search Options
- Uncheck the Data file that is missing stuff (or all of them, if you don’t know)
Hopefully MS will fix that painful issue. However, I don’t see a good fix in sight, even after a little digging.
–Ben
iPhone – check corporate voicemail problem fix
0One of the people in my office has an iPhone and was having problems in that the office voicemail system would only accept his password 25% of the time. It was getting really frustrating.
As it turns out, the iPhone mic may be interrupting your button presses being recognized, especially in a noisy environment. Here’s the fix
- Dial the office voicemail on the iPhone
- Mute the iPhone
- Dial your password
- Unmute the iPhone, if you want
Its a seriuosly simple fix, however, its not that obvious. We only got to the bottom of it because of inconsistencies between how often it would happen with and without a bluetooth earpiece.
–Ben
Droid – Unmerge a contact with a similar name
6So the facebook integration is nice, but I have a wife named Kat and a sister named Kate. Somehow, in Droid’s mind, they are the same person. Needless to say my sister got a strange response when she texted me and it came up as “Kat.”
After a mistake that left my sister howling, I researched the problem and the fix is easy. Just not well documented
- Go to contacts
- Select to the “merged contact” in the list (You should see all their contact information)
- Click the menu button (the one with all the lines)
- Click on the “edit contact” button
- Click on the menu button again
- Click on the separate button
There you go, the contacts are now separated. And my sister will not get any more messages intended for my wife.
On a side note: To join a contact, you follow the same instructions with one of the contacts to be joined. Instead of the last step of clicking on the separate button, you click on the join button. You then select the contact to be joined. However, I hear that you can’t join two contacts that were imported from the same source. So you can’t join two contacts that were imported from Gmail. However, you can merge a contact from Gmail and one from microsoft exchange. You can even merge the Gmail, exchange and facebook contact, if you wish. At least that is what I’ve interpreted.
Good Luck and Happy Veterans Day!
Program to Sync Droid to Your Music, Videos and Media – like iTunes for Droid
2The iPhone has iTunes, so what does Droid have?
If you dig deep enough, it looks like Droid has Motorola Media Link. I haven’t tried it, but I’m downloading it. However, since Motorola says it works with Droid, I’m apt to believe it. It even appears to transcode video to the right format! Woohoo!
Other people have suggested MediaMonkey. I may try that if I don’t like Motorola Media Link (Media Link also looks like a rebranded nero product).
I read that its like iTunes for Droid. We’ll see.
Look for an update and see if I have anything interesting to say after use.
On a side note. Droid rocks.
UPDATE: Emphasized that Media Link looks like the rebranded nero product not MediaMonkey.
Dell Media Direct won’t Boot Windows – Maybe Bitlocker – Solution
207I’m not sure why Dell can’t actually tell people this. However, if you find yourself stuck booting Dell MediaDirect, and don’t know how to fix it. Try this:
- Turn off your computer
- Hit the button shaped like a home (the Dell MediaDirect button).
Seriously. When the power is off, the Dell MediaDirect button acts a toggle button to boot the other partition. Try to find that on Dell’s site, and well, I couldn’t find it with several good searches.Thanks to GigaMegaBlog.
Fix – Macbook won’t wake up, hear boot sound
0I’ve installed Windows 7 64-bit on my MacBook, which required ripping my factory Win 7 DVD (yes, I’m hosting a launch party) and recreating it without versioning numbers (see Jowie for similar problem fixes). I’ve actually really liked it.However, twice its gone somewhere bad while sleeping. I actually think the problem is that it wakes up while closed and goes back to sleep, causing some indeterminate state. The problem is that I have tried to use the power button to turn it off and then back on. When I do, I hear the boot sound, but no booting seems to occur.Here’s my solution. Turn off the Mac (hold the power button until it switches off). Hold shift while you turn on the machine. Apparently this clears the dynamic bootloader and all things come back together.If this worked for you, please leave a comment below.–Ben
Rant: PayPal can email me, but won’t accept email responses
0You know, I’m tired of the run-around by companies that feel free to contact me by email, but won’t accept responses from the email addresses they use.Case in point 1: PayPal PayPal sent me an email about using them to purchase some more. I wrote them back and said that I was hesitant because of all the bad press they’ve been getting. New fees and not a lot of disclosure.See: Consumerist Articles about PayPal’s New FeesThe email I got back was like this:”We want to help you but we’re not able to respond directly to emailssent to this address.One of the best ways to get answers to your questions is to go to thePayPal website and visit the Help Center by clicking “Help” at the topof the page.If you have a problem with limited access to your account, you’ll needto:1. Go to the PayPal website and log in to your PayPal account.2. Click “Resolution Center” at the top of the page.3. Follow the instructions in “Steps to Remove Limitations.”If you can’t log in to your account, you’ll need to:1. Go to the PayPal website.2. Click “Contact Us” at the bottom of any page.3. Click “Contact Customer Service.”4. Click “Continue” and follow the instructions.We value your business and want to provide you with the best customercare.”Utter BS. They care enough to have me click and login around their website to find some contact form which can send me another “you are important letter.”However, when they want my business, they feel free to email me directly and send me their thoughts. Sounds a little one-sided. Case in Point 2: ComcastI call and make an appointment for a downgrade in service (I don’t need a landline anymore) and I’m told I don’t need to be present. Comcast then blissfully sends out an email stating that I now have an appointment and that a person over 18 needs to be present. However, they don’t monitor their email, so I should feel free to waste my time calling them again to verify that I don’t need to be there. On the other-hand they have plausible deniability of anything they may say over the phone because I have written confirmation in my hand that I need to be there.Seriously, if you want to play the email game, then make it two ways.If you decide to go that route, then expect the person to blog about it rather than send it into your black hole contact form.Sheesh/rant
Microsoft injunction by i4i stops MS from selling Word or using XML in DOCX file formats
0Wow. Just read that Microsoft can’t sell or support Word, including its XML DOCX file format. MS has 60 days to get relief or it kicks in.See the full article on Consumerist or SeattlePI.Seattle PI links the injunction document.