WSJ Syndrome

Today for a spell, as indicated in the red ellipse on this screenshot, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was unavailable on the Wall Street Journal website subscriber edition’s home page. As if that weren’t outrageous enough, the index was just as AWOL from any of the immediately accessible pages under the “Markets” tab, on this screenshot circled in blue.

Um, the website for the premier publication of Dow Jones & Company makes its subscribers wander off to some other non-Dow website to get an update on its most famous equity index?!?

Then again, why is that not really all that unexpected? Sooner or later, everything the WSJ touches – even its own most treasured index – suffers from the WSJ syndrome.

Google Doodie

From bad to worse: First Google News was dumping my customizations (what good is it going through the trouble of tailoring news that doesn’t remember settings one session to the next?), then the World News module went bye bye (someone tell W to stop playing with those red buttons on his phone, please), and now we’ve got the pleasure of no news at all (“and I think to myself, what a wonderful world”).

Doesn’t mean I’d turn to MSN to see what’s going on. Google’s blank screen is as far down as I care to take this particular spiral.

In a WordPress Minute

I admit it: I was stupid enough to waste half an hour refreshing this every other minute before realizing their minutes are what we call days. But I do learn quickly: next time, first time I get this, I’ll not return until the next day. If then, even.

Customer Service Lesson #1: Say you’ll be back in an hour, so your customers don’t waste that hour counting every minute, and they’ll be back in an hour, even if it takes you a few minutes past that.  Say you’ll be back in a minute when you know you won’t be, and eventually they’ll just stop coming back at all.

Eh, but maybe I’m not giving WordPress enough credit. They probably were back every minute to post a new message saying they’d be back in another minute, don’t you think?

MSN SMS Not Entertaining

One of these days when I have nothing better to waste time on, I’ll spit out a little venom on how incredibly brainless MSN’s SMS alerts are. For this morning, though, I’ll only finally waste a few minutes on at least finally stopping the idiocy from spamming my cell phone. I’ll miss my daily laugh-at-Microsoft hits a little, truth be told, but will just have to find some other silliness to keep myself occupied.

But rather than just discontinue the entire MSN SMS alert flow off completely at the stem of it all – the basic election to receive any alert at all – let me first come over here to verify something that had been annoying the hell out of me. Tell me what I’m missing: does this screenshot have “Entertainment” selected? I didn’t think so. So then, why do I get the stupidest SMS alerts of the entire batch – the MSNBC Entertainment ones – more regularly than any of the others?

So, right after this screenshot I unselected everything. Now watch. Until I turn the whole damn thing off, I’ll probably still keep getting those numbskull Entertainment alerts. I know, in its own ways the Google SMS system is as bad if not worse. But if MSN SMS alerts are even a small illustration of how Microsoft thinks it might mount any competition with Google, perhaps they should just offer to let themselves be bought out by Yahoo!

Strawpoll Simul

Which half is more important in a PB&J sandwich: peanut butter (1) or jelly (2) ?

– strawpoll

1 Because he said jelly. – susan

2 Because she said peanut butter. – adrien