Alex Blogs Too

Pango - חניה סלולרית

2011-01-04T16:43:00.002+02:00

מכירים את זה ?

מתקשרים ל *4500 ואפשר לחנות בלי כרטיס , בלי מדחן , בלי פקח ובלי דוח .

שירות באמת נהדר ... אבל :

נניח שאתם חונים בעיר כלשהיא - פתח תקווה לדוגמא .

מתקשרים לשירות של פנגו , אומרים את שם העיר למענה האוטומטי שלאחר כמה נסיונות

באמת מצליח לזהות את שם העיר שאמרתם ,

ואז המענה שואל אתכם את השאלה הבאה :

"באיזה אזור אתה חונה ?"

אפשרויות הבחידה הן :

1. רחבי העיר

2. אזורי התעשייה

3. אזור בתי החולים ביילינסון ושניידר

אני לא תושב פתח תקווה . הגעתי לרחוב מסוים שבו אני רוצה לחנות , ובאמת שאין לי שום מושג

באיזה אזור נמצא הרחוב הזה .

השלטים של הרחובות לא מכילים את שם האזור .

יותר מזה .. אני בטוח שלא הרבה תושבים יודעים איך העיר מחולקת לאזורים .

כשנתקלתי בבעיה הזו ,

בחרתי באזור שנראה לי הכי מתאים - עד כמה שאני מכיר את העיר .

והרמתי טלפון למוקד של פנגו . אמרתי לעצמי :

נשאל נציג שלהם - אולי לפחות יש להם מערכת ממוחשבת חכמה שתדע לתת תשובה -

איפה נמצא הרחוב שבו חניתי .

אבל גם זה לא .

הנציגה החביבה הציעה לי להתקשר למוקד 106 על מנת לברר את הנושא ,

כשהיא הוסיפה הערה מעניינת :

"אם הפקח יבוא , ואתה הפעלת את החניה על האזור הלא נכון -

הוא בכלל לא יראה שהפעלת את החניה , כי הוא בודק לפי אזור מסוים "

התקשרתי ל 106 , ושם כמובן קיבלתי תשובה .

במקרה האינטואיציה לא הטעה אותי , ובחרתי באזור הנכון .

ועכשיו לדוח המבקר :

יצרתם שירות מעולה , חדיש .. אבל עוד טיפה מחשבה על הצד של הלקוח .

אני בטוח שבצורה כלשהיא אפשר להקל עלינו.

ד"א , אם אתם תממשו את זה( אם בכלל ) באמצעות זיהוי קולי של שם הרחוב , תשפרו בבקשה את האלגוריתם !!

תודה .

Second hand socks anyone ?!?

2011-01-04T16:39:00.001+02:00

My first feedback on MS Connect

2010-04-29T18:38:00.002+03:00

Regular expressions list in the Regular Expression Editor dialog in VS 2008 should be configurable ! What the hell I need a french phone number regular expression for !?!?!

Vote for the feedback "

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/555384/customize-standard-expressions-list-in-regular-expression-editor-dialog-in-vs-2008

Service from a very HOT company

2010-04-29T00:51:00.004+03:00

Few days ago I've called a certain company ( one of the big media/communication )

providers .

A nice service desk girl answered the call .

- Me :
Hello . I would like to hear some information about the phone line from your company.

Can you please tell me the prices ?

-She:

Well , I cannot tell you the prices , but I can write down your phone number and our representative will call you back in an hour

- Me:

Ok , my number is ... #####

- She:

Thank you sir . Now , can you tell me if you're satisfied with the service I gave you ?

- Me (wondering) :

What service !?!?!?! Writing down my number for other representative is a service ?!?!?!

I realize that in your work orders you have that line that says :
"Now darling.. ask the asshole on the phone about the quality of service he got from you"

But hey , use your brain - why the f#$& you ask me about it ? You didn't provide me a service!!

By the way , the representative never got back to me .

I had to call them again after 2 days , and after comparing the price they gave me, with other service provider , I chose the other one .

That's just a little sample . I've suffered a lot in the past from their awful service quality.

Hours of waiting on the phone until someone will pick up ...

Just thought that they got better - and yes they got better .

Now they pick up the phone quickly .

The problem is that the one who picks up can't give you the required service.

To whoever wonder what company is that , it's HOT !!!

(hmm.. that one was in the title )

Site speed factor for SEO

2010-04-11T11:32:00.010+03:00

Google announced that from now on ,
the speed of the site will be an important factor in the page ranking .

So if you want your sites to get up in the web searches in Google , you better
make them load fast.

Though some things are not that clear to me .
For example :

1.If I have a light page (well.. like google search page ) - it will sure load faster than a page loaded with info - like some article . Will the algorithm will take this into account ?

2. My server is located in Israel , and the search is done from US for example .

Sure it will load a little bit slower. How Google will treat this ?

Read all about it here - Using site speed in web search ranking

Vowels missing in Gmail

2010-04-02T10:58:00.003+03:00

Yesterday as I entered to Gmail I've noticed something strange ..

All the vowels were missing :)

Latter saw this post on Gmail blog :

Today's vowel outage

Of course it was a 1 April joke..

Hebrew XP

2009-12-07T14:25:00.006+02:00

For the first time I've seen Windows Xp in Hebrew today.

Now ..I consider myself as a power user ( you know .. about 8 years of being a programmer .. 3 years being a system administrator)

Even I've had a dillema when I pressed the "START" button to log off from the system.

I had to choose between two options.. between "ניתוק" and "התנתקות".

How can a simple home user can understand the difference???

That's what I call dumb UI...

Do you want to open or save this file ?

2009-07-05T21:29:00.007+03:00

When you go to url which is a non-html file ( for example - PDF, WMV , AVI ) ,

and the IE just automatically opens the file in the appropriate application - it's great !

BUT .. sometimes you would like it to ask you what do you want to do with the file ?

For example - maybe you don't want to watch the WMV right now , but rather download it , and watch it later.

Well .. I wanted the IE to ask me about WMV's - but it just automatically opens it with the Media Player .

Why ?

Since once when I opened a wmv file - IE asked me the following :

And I choosed "Open" and removed the "V" from the "Always ask before opening this type of file".

Now the question is how do you get back to this to mark that checkbox ..?

Well .. here you go :

Explorer ( Windows file explorer ... not IE ) ->

Tools->

Folder Options->

File Types ->

Advanced ->

Mark the "Confirm Open after download"

I just wonder .. shouldn't it be much simpler ? And why it's not in IE !?!?!

Do you want 100% privecy ?

2009-06-24T14:27:00.001+03:00

Come to Israel .. we need English teachers !

ASM Language

2009-06-07T16:26:00.005+03:00

Just read in IE blog , that IE8 is now available in additional languages .

One of them is "Assamese" - a languge I've never heard about

( well.. I guess it's not the only one )

Anyway - it's code is "ASM" :)

jmpl %r15+4,%r0

addcc %r3,%r5,%r3

Google.. pro-arab ???

2009-05-21T20:13:00.008+03:00

Well... as I were using "Google Trends" and "Google Insights for search",

I noticed an interesting fact..

That's from Google Trends :

And that's from Insights for search:

Can anyone tell the difference ??

Mutiple Language Bars in remote desktop

2008-10-07T15:13:00.002+02:00

This bugged me for a long time..
When you log in to a server via remote destop , the taskbar is messed up with multiple language bars . And every time you log in , you get another one .

Well here is the solution from MS :

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932039/en-us

( to those of you who transferred to that article on the MS Israel site - you need to choose your location as US at the top of the page , and then this article contains a link to the hotfix .
The Israeli version for some reason does not contain the link to the hotfix )

System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient.Send

2007-11-14T18:41:00.000+02:00

Ok.

Thanks to MS for moving it from System.Web.Mail t0 System.Net.Mail (in .NET 2) ,
and improving the API .
And writing the code that replaces CDO.
And giving an option to use embedded resources ( besides attachments)

But WHY !! WHY when I send the mail , there is a delay , or executes only when thread is closed ??

The answer and the solution is here :
http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/showpost.aspx?postid=164793&siteid=1&sb=0&d=1&at=7&ft=11&tf=0&pageid=0

( On the second page there is the answer from "jptros" . Also look at the post from Damienb about solving CPU problem)

Took about an hour to find the reason . Annoying and stupid .

Also following links are usefull resources :
http://www.systemwebmail.com/
http://systemnetmail.com/
System.Net.Mail and embedded images

Script to reset DB.

2006-10-17T02:59:00.000+02:00

Having a script to delete contents of all tables in the DB of your application is handy -
to clean the test data from DB .

(I'm talking in this post about Sql Server 2000)

So far I've used a script which contained a bunch of DELETE statements in the right order ( according to the FK's).
( In my case I always leave some tables non-touched - for example : USERS,GROUPS and etc' - just for not entering all this info again every time I clean the DB)

But since the application is under development - new tables are added all the time.
And I became annoyed by the need to update the script with each new table.

So I wanted to write some kind of script that will delete data from all tables in the DB, besides those I specify .

This way the script almost never needs an update.

I did it in the following way :

exec sp_msforeachtable

@command1 = "ALTER TABLE ? NOCHECK CONSTRAINT ALL",

@command2 = "DELETE ?",

@command3 = "ALTER TABLE ? CHECK CONSTRAINT ALL",

@whereand = ' and name not like ''%LUT%'' and name not in(''USER'',''USER_GROUP'',''SECTION_GROUP'')'

Another option is to write code with CURSOR which runs over all the tables you want (taking it from the sysobjects table ) .

But this is simpler , since sp_msforeachtable
does that for you.

I wasn't familiar with sp_msforeachtable untill now.
Here some info on this sp and other useful undocumented Sql Server sp's :

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/1490661

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3441031

http://www.mssqlcity.com/Articles/Undoc/SQL2000UndocSP.htm

9 JS tips you may not know

2006-10-09T00:47:00.001+02:00

Finding Out Class Names of JavaScript Objects

2006-10-09T00:47:00.000+02:00

Using fewer images for rollover effect ( using CSS )

2006-10-09T00:45:00.000+02:00

How Israel Work ?

2006-10-08T03:16:00.000+02:00

I've just asked on HowStuffWorks.com the question : "how Israel work".

And somehow I've only got negative answers related to :
1. Money laundering
2.C-4
3.Hostage Negotiation.

Now I can somewhere understand how we appear in issues related to number 2 and 3
(with all the terror that we suffer from)

But I wonder what "money laundering" has to do with Israel .

Ah .. maybe I should ask the beloved people who lead us .

Anyway .. I'm too tired for actually reading the stuff they have there about money laundering , and what is Israel has to do with that .

Bad Error Message

2006-07-03T00:53:00.000+03:00

Hi .

I've just came across a site , which gave me the following error message in the process of registration .
( And it's not just a site of some kid .. it's a site related to sport bets and online casino )

Message is in Hebrew and it says :
"Attention - One or more fields in the form has illegal character."

I just wonder .. whoever wrote the validations for this form, probably knows ( in code) which field is the troublemaker.
So .... why !?! why ?!? why !?!?! to hide this time-saving info from the user.
Let's say that for some reason (??? ) you don't know which field is it .
So maybe give me the bad character .. and I'll go over the 20 fields in the form and find it.
Give me something !!!

Google Spreadsheets

2006-06-09T21:23:00.000+03:00

Another step in Google's way to world domination.

It's not new , not that original.
(There are already few "Online Spreadsheet" sites out there )

But now Google have this too.
And remember that they are now also the owners of Writely ..

Do some 1+1 calculation ..

Now about the functionality - it's basic
( and as MS already said about this - it looks like Excel , but before 10 years).

Anyhow - not all of us need sophisticated spreadsheets .
Mostly we need the basic functionality ( though they will probably enhance it anyway )

So Google have this with a huge advantage over MS -

It's accessible to you from any place in the world ,
from IE , FF and probably Netscape (I still haven't tested it in that one ).
You don't have to install it .
You have your documents online. ( Though this is not always the best thing )

Anyhow - I give Google 9/10 points for this .

Well Done !

Browsers compatibility issues

2006-06-08T04:41:00.000+03:00

Hi people .

I'm now having the "enormous pleasure" to make a web site we're developing compatible for the "non-IE" browsers , such as Netscape and Firefox .

Since most of our web applications are written for inside use of organizations (on the Intranet) ,
we always rely on the fact that the clients are using IE and even of a specific version, and that , is actually a part of the application requirements in the
design document.

Based on that , we have many written client side code that we re-use in every application that will work in IE , but was never tested on other browsers.

But now the site we develop is going to be on the Internet , and the client demands that it should support not only IE , but other "known" browsers too.

So now I'm going over the html , css , code and try to make it work "for all".

Changes include :

DOM properties/methods use

There are many properties and methods that are either do not exist in other browsers , or called differently.
CSS stuff

Some styles are not supported , or syntax/names are different.
XMLDOM properties/methods use

Mozilla does not use the MS XMLDOM activex , instead they use their own implementation of XMLDOM.

Hence some methods/properties do not exist/called differently.
HTML

Mozilla handles HTML not "exactly" like IE ..

So if you write a simple plain text in your page , without use of any html tags - it's probably will look the same in all the browsers .
But obviously you do more than that .
So you have to play with it to reach a "common html level" so that pages will look good and similar in all the browsers.

In mostly all of the mentioned above issues it seems that those Mozilla browsers are the trouble-makers . But if you think deeper - they are not.
They claim to use the W3C standarts and claim to be strict about this .

I use the word "claim" since I haven't tested it -
and maybe they're actually not .

But anyhow - Microsoft has implemented many stuff ( in CSS , DOM )
over the years , that are pretty usefull and we already take that for granted , and use it all over.

These MS-standarts somehow became "world-standarts" , since when most people develop sites , they think : "it's 99% IE out there" .

So they develop "by MSDN" .

The problem is that those standarts are still MS only ..

And though they are great and everyone loves using them.. they aren't supported in other browsers .

Now .. this issue of Ms standarts - I don't know whether this was done intentionally by MS over the years , with the purpose to dominate the browsers world,
or whether their purpose was pure and only for "making the world better place to live in".

So it's actually their fault that I'm awake now at 05:30 AM writing those thoughts.

I've found plenty of information regarding compatibility issues over the web .
Some in forums and some in articles .

After I'm done with this mission - I will post some summary of addoptations and links to articles I've found .

Wish me luck...

The magic I've found about System.Enum

2006-04-26T02:13:00.000+03:00

Have you ever needed to write a method that will receive a value of any enumeration type ?
Well .. I had .

I also had to retrieve the int value that stands for the value that was passed .

So this is how I did that :

public void GetAnyEnumAndDoStuff(System.Enum AnyEnum)
{
int iMyValue;
iMyValue = (int)Enum.Parse(AnyEnum.GetType(),AnyEnum.ToString())
}

It's finally here !!! The Google Calendar !

2006-04-20T04:40:00.000+03:00

Really great job .
Go try it now !

Microsoft codenames

2006-04-17T03:29:00.000+03:00

Nice to know..
I wonder .. do they actually have elections for those , or there is someone that decides on that , or maybe they wrote the "Product Names Generator" ?

You think they have a whole position dedicated to this ? :)

Screenshots of the Office 2007 User Interface

2006-03-10T09:48:00.001+02:00

Writely is now part of Google!

2006-03-10T09:48:00.000+02:00

How to use Outlook to backup your Gmail account

2006-03-10T09:46:00.000+02:00

Microsoft.com in 1994...

2006-03-10T09:42:00.000+02:00

Oracle to Send Stryker Software Developer into Space

2006-02-17T03:49:00.000+02:00

Some programmer at Oracle won a trip to the space.
"Emmett will experience weightlessness..."
I wish Oracle products could experience weightlessness too..
Not just the programmers.

Anyway .. good luck !

I've added it to Digg.com - Digg this here

Check this out ..

2006-02-16T18:08:00.000+02:00

http://www.netvibes.com/ - Here you can create your own customized "portal page".

It's in the same way http://www.google.com/ig looks .
But in my opinion it looks even better and gives you more control over the
so called "webparts" .

Do you know more sites like these ?

(Update 04/03/06) - I've also discovered the http://www.pageflakes.com

Worth a visit...

2006-02-12T01:05:00.000+02:00

Nice music resource

The things you can do in a browser..

2006-02-10T00:09:00.000+02:00

Data sheet on the web

It's amazing which level of UI and complicity you can
reach using only the pure browser environment.

Yada Yada Yada

2006-02-08T01:56:00.000+02:00

I've just installed the Google toolbar .

That's the dialog which appears right after the installation
(notice the red lines)

Funny guys .
If you use Gmail you can also notice funny messages they have there.

Here we go...

2006-02-08T01:45:00.000+02:00

Guess what ... I've decided to blog too.
It seems that everyone now has a blog .

What you know - maybe in 10 years from now they'll start putting
your email address and the blog url into the ID Card .
And in about 20 years you'll have both of them printed on your forhead.

Sick .. sick world.

But hey - that's the fashion now .. so let's be fashionable !