This is sooo nerdy it hurts

Now we know where Microsoft got the name. Brilliant.

I see that although this was written a while ago, there have been some recent posts.

I have had some dealings with both the banks mentioned here, and am not happy with either.

I changed to suncorp because I was searching for something local in QLD, something that was a bit more friendly.

In the end their internet banking was ridiculous, transferring out of the bank is a hassle, as are B-payments, no automated service!

And they are now pushing you to purchase a security token to generate a security code to make things even safer (than already secure banking?!) and this would be inconvenient and could easily lose and probably need to pay a lot in recovery fees for.

I have been trying to close this bank for almost one year now. First I was talked into staying with them through an offer of a Visa Debit card - my reason for leaving (silly for giving one) was that I had problems when I tried to use the debit card overseas as it was not on an international network (it was only a back up as I had another account with my primary bank, and I had just had this card stolen with my wallet).

I was satisfied for a while, but then the non-suncorp ATM fees were biting me too.

Finally I tried to close it again, and was told that I had some "dormant accounts" that I first had to re-activate. The only way to do this was to use a service that I had never used with Suncorp (and frankly haven't used with any bank or service provider since 2002) and use phone banking.

I protested that surely there must be some other way to close the account, speak to a supervisor, manager, write a letter to the head of banking? No, only phone banking.
As this was not something that I wanted to do I put it off and tried a few more times to close it at the branch, through the website service centre and over the phone again - you know, talking to a "real person".

Then I forgot about it and had a strange visa direct debit request go through. And the charge for not enough funds directly after.
I thought this was a one-off thing and was following my own avenues to try to reverse this when it happened again.

My account is now $80 in debt from these fees plus some!

I have finally put my fears of a service I have no need for aside, and called today to transfer funds. I know why I haven't used phone banking for the longest time - it is such a waste of my time I cannot believe it. I am overseas by the way, and a call back to Australia for 45 minutes is not cheap…

Eventually I was informed that the call centre is 24 hours and can help me close it after I have transferred the funds. I called and was told that it was "10pm in Australia and you need to go into a branch, I think, to do that".

Well I might just be writing to the CEO to close this bloody account!!

No I didn't! How about that… that's far more useful. I bet this is the good work of Ash Nallawalla who is doing SEO work for Sensis.

Hey Dan, did you know that you can now search the Yellow Pages via Google?

http://feeds.lifehacker.com.au.....oogle.html

Cheers,
Stu.

OMG YOU ARE SO RIGHT.

Hi, Mark!

Could you spell ACDC now, mate??!! It is very very FUNNY… Ha ha ha…(*__*)! i liked the audio clip.

Thank you for your reference.

Cheers,
Lam

getkigoo.comWe just launched KiGoo, a free tool that allows Google users to fully manage (create,

read, update and delete) their Calendar and Contacts from MS Outlook.

Also KiGoo manage the Free Busy information of your Gmail contacts for appointments if

they shared their FB status.

Currently we support Windows XP and office 2007.

http://www.getkigoo.com

Mistakes made by people switching from one car to another:

1. Thinking the reverse is in the same place as in their car.

2. Thinking the clutch goes just as deep as in their car.

3. Expecting all the buttons and knobs to be exactly in the same place…

…

it's not much of a difference but nobody makes this kind of list.

here's a few more:

Mistakes made when switching from one Microwave oven to another.

Mistakes made when switching from one remote tv control to another

Mistakes made when switching to a fountain pen from a ballpoint….

life is not flat. You got to keep on getting and honing skills… that's the big picture.

enjoy!

QRious.com.aucognation.netcollins.net.prCognation.netHi DanWarne - yep it's interesting that Telstra have decided to 'get viral' all of a sudden for the launch of their qr code project.

Unfortunately someone should have briefed them that it helps not to be too 'obvious', the same "whats happening at qrious.com.au" comment is popping up everywhere.

Having said that it's been with great interest that as an expat I've been watching the launch of http://www.QRious.com.au by Telstra.

As a consultant who has briefed clients in the past about the QR space (check out http://www.cognation.net/profile) I assure you that QR codes have been used in Australia for a long time.

And yes Telstra's marketing rhetoric is way over the top BUT the deployment of QR readers directly onto handsets by a carrier has always been a barrier to utilization.

With Telstra getting into this in a big way my advice to clients is to leverage their marketing spend and take advantage of this.

For those of you that are interested in QR use overseas check out my blog http://www.collins.net.pr/blog and use the search term "QR" in the top left hand box and you'll find 10 or so articles about the history of QR and it's deployment globally in successful campaigns.

What’s surprised me on client calls over the last few days is the basic lack of understanding around what QR codes can actually be used for - I think it's one of those things that they have been around forever but marketers have never really looked that closely at them so I've posted a 60 second background overview at http://www.Cognation.net/QR

I'm sure Telstra will find a way to screw it up but QR codes are a good thing - hopefully people in Australia will take advantage of this and start implementign them for things other than marketing.

Cheers,
Dean

Well i wish i could say something nice about suncorp but i can't, they are, by far, the worst financial institution i have ever had the misfortune to deal with!

we have a business account there since 2004. Our Suncorp banking manager has NEVER been available.. we emailed her once about a query, 4 months later we received the reply… and it was an arrogant one at that… never again. We had a merchant facility with suncorp, because we have a home office, suncorp charged us an extra $10 per month for the machine rental than a retail shop, gave us a very very very old machine cos "it wasn't necessary for us to have a up-to-date model" and after 4 years of our loyality, they just slapped us with $165 to hand the machine back to them! and now they have refused twice to let us close our own account because they say the machine needs 30 days to close… despite the fact we no longer have it, have the facility to process CC's and they have taken the "penalty" from our account! and today it came to a head when they took fees from our account that they shouldnt have and put us in the red… and subequently they whacked us with $30 "honor" fee and are refusing point blank to reverse the whole thing even though it is their own mistake….

more recently, I had $50,000 transferred into my account, suncorp told me they would take 9 business days to clear the funds, despite it being sent from ANZ - Suncorp via a cleared funds transfer… after threatening suncorp with A current affair, banking ombudsman etc, they relented and cleared the funds after 5 business days, but they sent me a rude letter and contacted the initiator of the funds transfer who doesnt even bank with Suncorp, so they breached privacy laws there. When contacting suncorp about why they decided no 9 business days to clear the funds we were given 6 different excuses by six different people, ranging from "its our policy" to "anything over 2k is subject to an extra 6 business days clearance" to "Anz tranferred it the wrong way"… nonsense.

when in-branch recently and speaking with a business banking agent at the business banking counter, we enquired about why suncorp take 30 days to close our eftpos facility when they have the machine back and taken the fees and there are no transactions outstanding… the reply we got was "i have no idea, i don't know about business banking" coming from a customer representative serving at the business banking counter!

Very very badly managed business, don't expect any real help, if you have money in your account, watch it dwindle away with suncorp and their made up fees… avoid like the plague if you are serious about your banking!

once suncorp allow us to close our account (third attempt) we will wash our hands in the nearest puddle to rinse off any residue from these modern day pirates!

And what's more is that the World Time in Google is intelligent. The color of the clock tells you whether its day or night: http://blog.gadodia.net/intell.....in-google/

Well quite obviously it's a completely lame attempt at a viral advertising campaign by Telstra for its upcoming 2D barcodes in print advertising, so you can hold up your Telstra mobile phone (if you are curious), snap a photo and then get sent to a web page. I've gotta say not only is that 'viral' ad not remotely clever or interesting, but it's also incredibly obvious what it is. And please don't spam your master's ad campaigns at my blog again.

Hello Dan
Yesterday I read your article about the top 30 mistakes made by new mac users. One mistake was not knowing the difference between the return and enter key. Last night I recall checking this on my macbook and finding that enter allows you to rename a file while return opens it; however, today they both rename the file. They seem to do the same thing. I'm not sure if I imagined the difference or not. So far my web searches show everyone saying that they both rename it. Will you please offer me some advice on this issue
Thanks,
Kevin

crikey dapper dan I thought you were a clean cut family man. yet here you are swearing your headoff on the internet. wow have you had an image makeover and now you are the tough guy of the web? what is going on at qrious.com.au in your learned opinion??

Two years ago, I'd have agreed with you. But hey, with Parallels, I am running OS X & XP.

And Vista…well…let's just say "Balmer" should be fired!

#1 mistake was buying the mac.

try thunderbird
1. connect your gmail account and google apps account
2. select mails from your gmail account in thunderbird
3. cut and paste to your google apps account

I can appreciate that journo's are underpaid and under-resourced relative to PR workers.

But I've never heard an explanation as to why the PR industry has got so big in the first place.

As a journalism graduate with relatively right wing political views, I think journalists themselves maybe party to blame.

Since modern journalism graduates tend to be left-wing, always looking out for the underdog types, businesses perceive them to be anti-business, and in an age where branding and image are such a big part of their profits, they are inevitably going to greater lengths to protect themselves from what they believe to be adverse publicity.

Admittedly I have no evidence for my theory, but I do know that US businesses give more donations to left wing causes (eg environmental groups) than right wing ones (eg, pro-business think tanks), so it's clear who they fear the most.

Hey Dan,

I think Murdoch was specifically talking about the WSJ when he said that a story was touched by 8.3 people, not newspapers in general.

-Sean

Suzan, the culprit is the google search toolbar that comes as part of Firefox. It is preinstalled for everybody and what allows the google search next to the url. Remove the google toolbar and the preinstalled google search bar and see if it helps.

Josh, Thank you for taking the time to offer me a possible solution to this mystifying conundrum! I actually did not even have the Google Toolbar installed in my Firefox (2.0.0.14), so I installed the latest after I read your message. Alas, I'm still getting the unwanted boldfacing. Since I don't see this on every site that I view in Firefox on the Mac, I just wonder if the problem lies in how I have coded "focus" and/or "active" link elements–but I don't see anything unusual there either.

Anyway, thanks again.
Susan

Susan,

In an update to my above post, I discovered a solution to the issue on my machine. Perhaps something similar will be of use to you. I was experiencing this problem regularly. I uninstalled the duplicate fonts, but it didn't resolve the problem. Looking into it further I read a hint about removing the preinstalled google toolbar. So I disabled and removed the preinstalled google toolbar, and that did resolve the problem. Sweet relief for my poor eyes. Ironically I downloaded and installed the latest google toolbar from the google site, and the problem did not return. Also as mentioned, Firefox 3.0 does not suffer from this issue, and is an easier "fix" for some. I'm personally testing in all browsers, so this was a constant annoyance when using CSS based styles in Firefox on Mac under seemingly random conditions. I hope this helps you in your search for a fix to your issue. Best of luck!

Kind Regards,
Josh

I'm running into a problem that is similar though not exactly the same as what has been discussed in the above thread. Resolving duplicate fonts did not fix my issue.

The problem I'm having occurs when I view pages on a web site that I am currently building, and it
seems to only occur in Firefox on a Mac.

When I pass the cursor over any link on a page, the link becomes boldfaced and stays boldfaced even if I move the cursor away from the link (I did not click the link). Also, if I scroll a section of the page up under the top of the window and then back out again, text within that section of the page becomes boldfaced–and it stays boldfaced until I refresh the page which returns all text as well as links to normal weight again.

I will immensely appreciate any suggestions!

Thanks,
Susan

I hate the ANZ bank! It doesnt matter how you look at it they are thieves. They steal money from account ‘legitimately’ through unecessary rate rises/fees, and illegitimately though double charging fees then refusing to give the money back. Obviously, as internationally they are majorly stuffed, they are trying to make money by screwing the little people over. I was given the wrong loan 2 times and when the sale was about to fall through, the ANZ insisted I sign the wrong loan forms with a dont worry we’ll take care of it attitude. I was to do this or I wouldnt get the loan. They seemed honest at the time, if I could only take that action back. I was then charged for ‘extra loans’, although I was told I wouldnt be affected by their screw up. I have now been trying to get the money back for over 3 months. The people at the branch told me it was my fault and shouldnt have used their mobile lender. The ANZ mobile lender has said it is not her fault, its mine. No one answers my calls, no one answers my emails. The complaints department doesnt even return calls. Despite being instructed by the banking ombudsman to return my money they havent! I wish I had never heard of the ANZ bank. I hope they do go into liquidation!!! Then someone, anyone would be better than them to take over my loan!

wow i think its been 8 years now since the ABA made there choice, like all of us would of thought, it was best station Properly ever
the most uniqe. ive been a hitzfm lister from the start and let me say you are the guys that stated it all the excitement. there wont be another station like it

i think hitzfm should return as a narrow cast station , like kissfm,

That video is really quite sad…

I understand that the bank (any bank) can only charge what the transaction actually costs them when you use another bank's ATM.

Long live Hitz FM.. Them was the days!!
time of my life!!

Make that 3 of them
Brilliant.
Any idea how to get them back without reloading the entire mailbox from the original server ?