Panos modeshow på Park Lane

A profile of my friend Panos, and a preview of an event at Park Lane on December 4.

Vox is blocking me

I have to conclude, sadly, that Vox is specifically blocking me from using its site.

This is so typical of my experience with technology, one that does not seem to be shared by other people. Am I just good at breaking websites and programs?

I argue I am not. I simply reveal more bugs because I am online more.

Today, I set up a new account on Vox under another name and can happily compose there. I won’t, because I don’t believe in using noms de plume. But it has proved that Vox is not letting me have my voice.

This must be that American irony we have all heard so much about.

In my years online, I have had Yahoo! Groups delete all the messages from one of my groups, even though there was no TOS violation. Yahoo! reps failed to address the matter. The best they could do was copy and paste from their FAQs, none of which dealt with the situation at hand.

I have had Google’s Blogger service delete the home page to the Beyond Branding Blog.

I have seen the same service delete Vincent Wright’s Social Media Consortium blog and over four years of work. My appeals to Google have fallen on deaf ears. Enquiries submitted in July, August and on September 13—after Google claimed it would investigate the bars on that blog ‘within two business days’—have been ignored. A further enquiry, after following the advice of a blogger who seemed rather well informed about blog deletions on Blogger, has also fallen on deaf ears, despite my following his suggestions to the letter. (He also told me of the two-day rule. I think two days have passed since November 23, but maybe Americans measure time differently after Doc Brown invented time travel in 1955?)

And now, Vox has barred me, ensuring that, of the last 30 days, it only worked faultlessly for three. I can do everything on the blogging platform except blog, which kind of renders it useless.

After three years, Vox’s terms of service (updated October 8, 2009) still say that the site is in beta and ‘You understand and agree that the Service may still contain software bugs, suffer disruptions and not operate as intended or designated.’

I might understand and agree with this, but these bugs are so unreasonable and so darned near intolerable that they do Six Apart, Vox’s creators, no credit. If it were 2006, I could understand the blog not working. But three years on and its uptime is three days out of thirty when it comes to my use of the service?

The difference between all of these companies is that Daisy at Six Apart has been communicating with me and showed she cares; none of the other organizations have given a damn.

But I hardly think I am important enough to be targeted by Vox.

What this is highlights for me is the collapse of ‘Made in USA’. Once we thought this just meant shoddy Chrysler Sebrings. Now it is deteriorating in the tech sector.

Which can only be good for the rest of us who can build that better mousetrap or, for that matter, a blogging platform that cares.

Vox is dead on yet another Mac and ISP I tried to compose on Vox.com after borrowing an acquaintance’s Mac laptop tonight, hooked up to the Wimax ISP and running Safari. The Mac was running Snow Leopard. And, as usual, it was impossible to compose, with Vox delivering a blank screen. This is the first non-company computer I have tried, using a totally different ISP from the other attempts. As if we couldn’t before, we can conclude there is no issue with any of the computers, and there is no issue with any of the ISPs. Vox is, simply, unusable. The above table shows where it is impossible for me to compose on Vox, unless one is prepared to wait hours or days for the screen to appear. The ISPs’ names are in the table cells. We can also conclude that Vox is not blocking New Zealand, since several other friends were able to compose posts. It appears that I am alone among my immediate contacts who use this site, and it makes me wonder what bug exists on the site since my tests have now been very comprehensive. There must be others who also cannot compose on Vox, but perhaps have no alternative, so they have not been able to tell anyone else publicly.

Vox is dead on yet another Mac and ISP I tried to compose on Vox.com after borrowing an acquaintance’s Mac laptop tonight, hooked up to the Wimax ISP and running Safari. The Mac was running Snow Leopard. And, as usual, it was impossible to compose, with Vox delivering a blank screen. This is the first non-company computer I have tried, using a totally different ISP from the other attempts. As if we couldn’t before, we can conclude there is no issue with any of the computers, and there is no issue with any of the ISPs. Vox is, simply, unusable.

The above table shows where it is impossible for me to compose on Vox, unless one is prepared to wait hours or days for the screen to appear. The ISPs’ names are in the table cells.

We can also conclude that Vox is not blocking New Zealand, since several other friends were able to compose posts. It appears that I am alone among my immediate contacts who use this site, and it makes me wonder what bug exists on the site since my tests have now been very comprehensive. There must be others who also cannot compose on Vox, but perhaps have no alternative, so they have not been able to tell anyone else publicly.

Any idea from Hyundai why the computer display at Auckland Airport, next to its new Santa Fe, is exclusively in Arabic? Perhaps Dubai businesses are still interested in taking the airport over, and Hyundai knows something the rest of us don’t. Click for high-res photo

Any idea from Hyundai why the computer display at Auckland Airport, next to its new Santa Fe, is exclusively in Arabic? Perhaps Dubai businesses are still interested in taking the airport over, and Hyundai knows something the rest of us don’t.

My transport in Auckland this time: the Holden Commodore SV6. Pros: people still look at this car, despite the basic shape having been around for a few years. And the V6 is smooth. Cons: the interior is about as low-line as a mid-size car from the 1990s. You can’t even get the electric windows up all the way with one touch: you have to keep your finger on the button. And despite being a supposedly sporty model, it lacks a flappy-paddle gear change. We are talking rugged and simple here, not sophisticated and sporty. Click for high-res photo

My transport in Auckland this time: the Holden Commodore SV6. Pros: people still look at this car, despite the basic shape having been around for a few years. And the V6 is smooth. Cons: the interior is about as low-line as a mid-size car from the 1990s. You can’t even get the electric windows up all the way with one touch: you have to keep your finger on the button. And despite being a supposedly sporty model, it lacks a flappy-paddle gear change. We are talking rugged and simple here, not sophisticated and sporty.

Here’s how a traceroute to www.vox.com looks from Auckland, New Zealand. I think this confirms that this site is very dead across the country. Robin Capper has magic powers, because I have found it near impossible to get this site working on Mac or PC, Windows XP or Vista, Telstra Clear, Surfspot or Kordia, in Christchurch, Wellington or Auckland. Click for high-res photo

Here’s how a traceroute to www.vox.com looks from Auckland, New Zealand. I think this confirms that this site is very dead across the country. Robin Capper has magic powers, because I have found it near impossible to get this site working on Mac or PC, Windows XP or Vista, Telstra Clear, Surfspot or Kordia, in Christchurch, Wellington or Auckland.

Homer Simpson must be doing really well if he can afford a Holden Crewman. Click for high-res photo

Homer Simpson must be doing really well if he can afford a Holden Crewman.

Here’s another reason to get upset at Vox. Say you can load the compose screen, which I have found is highly unlikely if you live in Wellington or Christchurch. Can you import anything? Answer: no. Click for high-res photo

Here’s another reason to get upset at Vox. Say you can load the compose screen, which I have found is highly unlikely if you live in Wellington or Christchurch. Can you import anything? Answer: no.

Fictional exchange: please design a logo for me

It might not be real but I am sure every graphic designer can sympathize.

When emails fail to save

No surprise that my op–ed hasn’t run yet: it was a half-baked, draft version.

It’s weird, because I edited the piece straight on the email program (Eudora 7) and saved it, then sent it to a contact at The Dominion Post.

I discovered today, when copying and pasting it to my own blog, that the very important additions that meant the difference between it being a self-promotional piece for my own site and a proper op–ed were missing. They never got saved.

This is one of the few times that Eudora has let me down by not saving something—but I have no idea where the additions went. Normally, if one closes the email without saving, I seem to remember there would be a prompt.

Or can we blame this on one of those very regular Windows Update restarts that have a knack of deleting one’s work?

No, I’m not remembering this wrongly. I am absolutely clear that the op–ed was saved.

Just as Microsoft Word goes around changing fonts and margins on us as we type—something we have all encountered—we will have to chalk up this error on some glitch in the programming.

In fact, I remember this very error used to plague Dreamweaver 3 in the late ’90s: it would “forget” the latest save and you would have to redo the last few minutes’ work.

However, I can see the irony that, as running for Mayor on a technological platform, software did fail me and put a little bit of a glitch into the system.