M-Web 2, Seacom 0

SEACOM is an undersea cable that links Africa with Europe and Asia, when it works. It's also the primary bandwidth provider for my ISP, M-Web. Right now it's broken. This is the second time this year, and it will probably remain broken for the semi-finals and finals of the FIFA World Cup. How embarrassing.
M-Web gets my thumbs up during this debacle. When the cable went down yesterday, it effectively cut all access to the rest of the web, including this blog, Google, news sites, etc. M-Web responded quickly, posting a network status notice explaining the problem, and within a few hours they had alternative connectivity in place.
Last time the cable went down, M-Web sent a letter of apology to its customers and promised to have more effective plans in place for any future issues. Clearly they have kept their promise. Viva M-Web, Viva! They were also the first ISP to offer uncapped broadband, and it works really well. Right now we're in "emergency mode" so some services are flaky, but the important ones are online, unlike other ISPs who have nothing.
Update, Wed 7th July: Telkom, that bastion of reliability and business ethics (NOT!) decided not to provide M-Web with bandwidth after all. They have an effective monopoly of the other undersea cable, SAT3, and decided to sell the bandwidth to someone else. So now ISDSL has bandwidth but M-Web doesn't. ISDSL's connectivity has been up and down like a yo-yo the whole day. And SEACOM is still broken. Eish!

DataInc - Complete Database Solutions

There is a new spammer on the block, who is now selling his ill-gotten database of email addresses to anyone gullible enough to part with their cash. This slimeball is called "Jeremy" and he won't use his real name. I wonder why? Last month he sent out a marketing email to businesses:

Subject: Crazy e-marketing Special!
Dear Business Owner,
Special for 4 days only- (Mon 21/6-Thurs 24/6) DO NOT MISS OUT!
Make an outright purchase of our email address mailing lists. Use as you want, when you want!
1-NATIONAL SA ADDRESSES-ONLY ADDRESS WITH NO SEGMENTATION
1.5million (total) R4250 NOW ONLY R99!

2-AREA SPECIFIC SA ADDRESSES-SEGMENTED INTO AGE GROUPS, GENDER & WITH RECIPIENTS NAME (total 429 606)
DIALLING CODE/AREA TOTAL RECORDS
021(Cape Town) 82 967
031(Durban) 43 588
011(Gauteng) 201 154
013(Mpumalanga) 11 879
041(P.E) 11 779
012(Pretoria) 78 239
Totals 429 606 Now Only R200!

OR TAKE BOTH:
1-All 1.5million national random email addresses (R99)
+
2- All 429 606 area specific email addresses (R200)
BOTH FOR ONLY R250! –

For further information or to take advantage of this massive sale, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Best Regards,
Jeremy
Sales Executive
Cell 072-144-2588 Fax 086-622-6041
jeremy.datainc@live.co.za

One can learn a lot about the sender from this message. Firstly, his use of upper case letters so prodigiously means that he is a marketing novice, and an internet newbie.
Second, he is completely irresponsible about the use of such a mailing list, and I'm sure he has failed to point out to his prospective clients the legal pitfalls and ISP Terms of Service dangers involved in sending out spam. But then anyone dumb enough to buy such a list deserves to be parted from their money by this "Sales Executive". His company is not a member of the Direct Marketing Association, which says a lot about its business ethics too.

Note: "DataInc - Complete Database Solutions" should not be confused with datainc.co.za, which is a legitimate business that doesn't involve itself in dubious and shady marketing deals.

Update 28th September 2011: It seems that "Ryan" (082-697-9197) is still selling these lists from 8 Canal Side, Century City, Cape Town. He has an ABSA bank account number 4067060916.

Drambuie is Perfect

Over the last two weeks I have been suffering from a bad cold that I called "Vuvuzela flu" because it sounded like a Vuvuzela every time I blew my nose. Now it has moved to my chest.
I'm fighting it off with plenty of Med Lemon, vitamins, sleep, and Infagard. To keep my throat comfortable I'm using the nectar of the gods: Drambuie. It contains whiskey, honey and herbs, and it is perfect for colds and flu. It's like a "hot toddie" ready made. Cheers!

Permission to Spam? Nope

I love spammers, especially South African ones. They are so sleazy, stupid and dishonest that they are quite entertaining. They make promises that any sucker can see through, and yet they are so enclosed in their own little reality distortion field, that they just don't get it.
For many years I have run www.worship.co.za, a web site dedicated to worship music. At the bottom of each page there is a line that reads: "If you spot any errors, inaccuracies or other bloopers, please send an e-mail to Donn Edwards" followed by my email address, encoded as <vmusic@spamcop.net>, which is designed to thwart spam bots, but still be legible to human readers after the browser has decoded it. It would seem this little bit of obfuscation is no longer sufficient, end the bots now decode the page before looking for email addresses. Of course the "spamcop.net" part should be a clue to anyone with a brain, but then some marketers aren't that bright.
Take Silver Solutions Marketing for example. They violated their M-Web Terms of Service by sending out unsolicited emails, using a bulk mailing program called SmartSend.2.0.104 on their ADSL connection 41-133-225-4.dsl.mweb.co.za. All of this information is included in the email header of the message they sent. DUH!
And the service they are selling? You guessed it: "email marketing". I'll give them kudos for putting their money where their mouth is, but clearly these people have no idea. They must be part of the 1% of the population who doesn't get enough email and who enjoys reading the ads for Viagra. Maybe they bought their marketing degrees online, or paid $59 for a course on "how to make money on the internet".
When I called their number to ask where they got my email address from, I got the lame "from the internet" excuse. When I asked them to be a little more specific, they emailed me the graphic above, showing the page they got my address from. I have now updated the page so that it specifically mentions not to use the address for marketing purposes. It feels a bit like those coffee cups that say "Caution: Contents Hot". I guess we have to spell it out for the dummies of the world.
As an added bonus, I have added the email addresses of Silver Solutions Marketing to the bottom of the page, in the HTML code, so they can find out what it is like to get their names in a spamming database. I guess they'll get a clue eventually.

Clever Beer Commercial

This ad has been showing on TV during the world cup. Personally I think it is one of the best commercials I have seen, because it is highly entertaining and visual. I have been wondering which beer brand was used, but it doesn't matter in the end.

Testing the new Defrag Review site

I have got my trusty FRAGG computer back, and have spent some time during this week setting up and tweaking my new web site: www.fact-reviews.com. I chose the name because I want my defrag reviews to be based on facts and benchmarks as well as user opinions. I chose "fact" because it is the opposite of "hype".
I am asking regular readers of this blog to take the time to check out the site, and leave comments (either at this blog article or using the Disqus facility on the site). Please bear in mind that the content is very sparse, and there are a lot of links that don't work because the pages haven't been created yet. If you don't like incomplete sites, stay away!
I have managed to get the left column of the menu to work, so it isn't a complete disaster. Over the next few days I am hoping to add some real reviews and benchmarks. I welcome all comments, questions and suggestions.
Update 26 June: A big thank you to readers from 24 countries who have visited the site to see what is happening. I have received some positive feedback, and will continue to work on the site to make it useful.
Update 27 June: I have added two new articles: "Why Defragmentation is Needed", and "Linux Defragmentation Issues". The Linux one will be quite interesting to Windows users too.

Font Upgrade to this Blog

I'm a self-confessed font junkie. If my wife wants to buy me a book, she can always buy me another font book. Now I'm trying another experiment with fonts, courtesy of Typekit. I signed up for a free account and selected two fonts: Droid Sans and Droid Serif.
I've written about the Droid fonts before, but unless you installed them to your PC, you won't have seen them yet. Now Typekit will enable your browser to see the fonts without any installation stuff. The fonts are provided by the Typekit web servers, and if your browser supports it, you'll see the fonts correctly.
At a later stage I may upgrade my free account to a paid one, in order to add more fonts or more web sites. For now, I'm a happy font junkie. Click on the Typekit icon on the bottom right corner of your browser to find out more about the fonts, etc.

Update 20 July: I took advantage of a special offer to upgrade my account to "Personal". Now I can include the fact-reviews.com web site in the same account, and have 5 fonts per site, if I really want to.

Our Soccer Trip to Rustenburg

Click on the image for more details

This is a composite picture stitched together by Windows Live Photo Gallery from a dozen or so photos taken on my new Nokia 6303i phone. I took them at half time in the England-USA match at Royal Bafokeng Stadium on 12th June 2010. The match was a 1-1 draw, and quite exciting. There was a great atmosphere in the crowd, spoilt only by the insane loudness of the Vuvuzelas. Fortunately we had good earplugs so we managed to preserve our hearing and not get a headache either.
The inset on the left shows a picture of a modified Vuvuzela that has to be the longest I've ever seen. The inset on the right is Penny doing her best to drink a Badweiser beer. If you look at the details of the picture you'll notice how many VIP seats are empty/unsold, and you can also see the non-functional TV screens on the left and right of the stadium.
In spite of the deafening noise, the overpriced beer and not being able to see the replays, we had a great time. Everyone was in a good mood, and even though the US fans were completely outnumbered, their shouts of "U-S-A U-S-A" could be heard above the din, and made the mood pretty festive.
The US team played well, but didn't seem to be able to finish off their attempts at goal. They were very sporting, and acknowledged their fans at the end of the match. I'm glad I supported them and hope they go on to the next round, even if their home country has no idea how well they did.
Logistics have never really been a strong point in South Africa, and the official FIFA web sites provided no useful information on how to get to the stadium. The map in the fan booklet is laughably bad. But there is a great graphic and information provided by the "Royal Bafokeng Nation" web site. I printed it out and it is shown behind the tickets (above). As it turned out the route to Sun City is well marked, and in combination with the directions to our hotel, we arrived safely and on time to check in at the hotel.
A very helpful lady from the Rustenburg Accommodation and Tourism Association suggested we try the Sundown Ranch Hotel. I'm glad we did. The cost of the stay at the hotel was less than the cost of a single FIFA ticket. And it included breakfast for two. Fortunately we didn't have to pay for the tickets (thanks to MTN who gave two to a friend of ours) and we have avoided buying anything with the FIFA logo on it, except for the food and drinks at the stadium.