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Update: I received an email/commentfrom the founder Kristopher Tate asking me to update my entry telling you that he is now (probably) directly in touch with me checking on those problems. Here a quote: “Your issues are due to a date formatting problem in your photos. I’m going to release an update that will fix your problems.
While I understand errors are frustrating, I am the only developer for Zooomr and certain issues get more priority over others.“.

So long 🙂

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A while ago, a friend sent me an email about Zooomr. (I.e. one of the guys running it) asking me to write a review about it and he added “(Press, media exposure of any sort; lead developer is VERY happy to interview)”.

So far so good, but my motivation to use it flushed down the toilet. Granted, I got a pro account and whatnot for this and so on, but Zooomr has 3 major problems similar services like Flickr didn’t have even when they were in beta still – like Zooomr is now:

1) The inability for the average user to contact support because its email address – zfeedback[at]bbridgetech.com – is mentioned nowhere on the Zooomr homepage.

2) You receive errors that gets fixed and then get broken again a few weeks after permanently and for some errors they will tell you that they won’t let you know when they got fixed. So I got an account that more not works than is working!

3) You receive nice emails like those:

“Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 23:12:14 +0200
We already told you that we are working on this. Please do not
contact us until we give you an update.”

Today, it’s July, 22nd and still no “update”. Because I am nice and social and I saw that they updated Zooomr to version 2.0 and had DOS attack problems recently I wrote this email:

“From: me
To: “Zooomr Support”
Subject: Fwd: Re: Zooomr Pro Account
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 16:26:57 +0200

Hello,

I guess you are all busy with the re-launch, I will stand by and wait till that is fixed until you relaunched Zooomr.
I am sorry to read on your blog that you got a DOS attack!

Good luck to you at Zooomr for the relaunch and thanks in advance for fixing this thing mentioned in this ticket here 🙂

All the best!
Bye!
Joerg”

Well, no reply. I lost my hope this thing will ever work right and get fixed.

Thanks for the account friends, but a pity it doesn’t work.

In my eyes those guys are totally overloaded and it’s so much to do and stuff, they are probably even too small (not enough employees?) to get this thing ever running up nicely.

So sorry, no review about Zooomr from my side – at least not for the moment.

Technorati Tags: Zooomr, blogs
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

The highly praised AOL Active Security Monitor is pretty much one thing in my eyes; crap!

The reasons: As seen on the screnshot it says that I have no firewall (which is wrong, I have a firewall and it is running!), that I have not all security updates installed (which is also wrong, I have them all installed). Furthermore it complains that I have two antivirus prgs running at a time! This is also wrong! – I have only one running!

I wonder how reliable their scanning routine is!

Technorati Tags: Windows, security
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Customer support can be really “helpful” at times.
My recent experience is about Need For Speed – Underground 2 in combination with the Logitech Formula Force EX & Force Feedback.

Force feedback is a simple function of DirectX. It calls functions of the controller that let it move and vibrate exactly like a normal steering-wheel of your car would do.

Since a lot of reviews suggest to buy a force feedback steering-wheel just because of Need For Speed Underground 2 I really wonder how it works because I found no option where to enable it.

The answer is simple though: There is a patch for this game that will enable Force Feedback automatically (but you cannot disable it within the game).

Here the reply of EA being not helpful at all:

“Need for Speed Underground 2 officially only supports keyboard and gamepads to control your vehicles. It is possible to connect a steering-wheel and to configure this inside the game, however we do not support this. We cannot give any further information with which steering-wheels Need for Speed Underground 2 works without problems.

In case problems arrise with the steering-wheel you use, we can only give you the hint to install the most recent drivers for your steering-wheel and configure this in Windows.

Greetings Alex
EA Customer Support”

Technorati Tags: Old computer games, hardware, support
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

I have reported earlier about the different naming for this webcam over here now according to this website Logitech announced the quickcam-orbit-mp-webcam as brand new webcam! 😀 So the old naming did confuse infact and they noticed and gave it back its old name! But to announce it as brand new is really very weird! Poor effort! 🙁

Technorati Tags: Logitech, Logitech Quickcam Orbit MP
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

I just picked this up on the ICQ downloads site, that there is a new language avaialble; Turkish! 🙂

Of course, I don’t know Turkish, but according to the pictures and InterTran this localized ICQ 5 version version features the following MyNet features as Xtraz:

– MyNet Mobile (Game , Melody Logo and Knowledge Services – translated with InterTran)
– MyNet E-Cards
– MyNet Dating
and – MyNet Email.

By the wayIncase you like its look, the skin can be downloaded seperately! 🙂

Technorati Tags: ICQ, skin, Turkish
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As promised earlier in my forum, here comes the post about Voice Emotion.

It’s a program tha allows you to play emtions & music while you talk, for some applications there is even a recording function.

Supported are Skype, AIM / AIM Triton, Gtalk, Msn, Yahoo Messenger, QQ (there is even an English version of the client available 🙂 ), and last but not least, Windows Live Messenger.

ICQ is currently not supported, but ICQ allows sound emotions already anyway, thanks to its Push-To-Talk Xtra! 😎

Sorry that it took that long until this blog entry, but earlier versions were really horrible and music and emotions would not play properly at all and it would even crash Skype once you have opened Voice Emotions.

So, the way it works is simple. You have to first startup Voice Emotion and then run the Skype, otherwise it won’t work. The recording feature is not available for Skype, unforrtunately so you have to use a Skype Extra for this!

Anyway, you just select the file as emotion or a music file and then press on play and you and all the call participants will hear what you played! That’s already all about it! It works pretty much like a rudimentary music player! 🙂

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Skype, Voice Emotion, VEmotion
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Now that they are cheaper, I decided to get one of those Force Feedback Wheels and I got a Logitech Formula Force EX (photo: Logitech) and it’s really weird good and wicked! 🙂

The best thing is the fact that it even works for Monster Truck Madness 1 & 2! And for the 2 there is even real Force Feedback support! 🙂 It’s so much fun when you rumble and shake through the mountains, stonese and mud and dirt! It’s wicked! And it’s amazing it supports Force Feedback noticing its age! 🙂

by the way:
I search for other Monster Truck Madness 2 owners that might be interested in an internet match, if so, please email me!! Thanks in adavance! =)

But I am very disappointed that Outrun 2006 does not support Force Feedback! 🙁

Technorati Tags: Old computer games, hardware
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

They did it! They translated the ICQ Toolbar into German! 🙂

It can be downloaded from here. They also opened a German ICQ Toolbar Board where they write in very broken German (which proves that they do not know German very good at all! 😀 ) that you can ask questions about it in English:

“
Willkommen zum die ICQ Toolbar Forum!
Hier können Sie ihrer Eindruck und fragen lassen an das neuen Toolbar bekannt geben.

Bitte versuchen ihren fragen auf Englisch ausdrücken.

Vielen Dank!
Die ICQ Team“

In English:

“Welcome to the ICQ Toolbar forum!
Here you can ask questions and leave your opinion about the new Toolbar.

Please try to keep your questions in English.

Thank you very much!
The ICQ Team“

Technorati Tags: ICQ, ICQToolbar
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The ICQ Team released yesterday a bugfix release; new ICQ 5.10 Build #3000 in English, Hebrew, German!

Enjoy! 🙂

Technorati Tags: ICQ, 5.1
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It finally has happened! =)

Google is a verb in Merriam Webster as seen in above screenshot (original here). You can also hear how it’s pronpunced incase you do not know how to speak it out and it’s explained for the people that live behind the moon! 😀

How about “to gmail” soon? 😉

Technorati Tags: Google, Gmail
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