Monthly Archives: July 2010

Really not looking forward to travelling Ryanair

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Apart from the early flight, I was taking a look at their cabin baggage policy:

We reserve the right to cancel your reservation without refund and to deny you boarding if you arrive at the boarding gate with more than one item of cabin baggage or if that item exceeds the maximum dimensions.

Cancelling your reservation without refund? So if you turn up with too much baggage, and offer to throw it out, they could still cancel your ticket.

I don’t understand how they can get away with it! Why do people keep flying with them? Having said that, I still haven’t booked but they are one of only two airlines that fly to where I need to get!

iAd in the UK

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In my (it seems) continuing series on things that work in the US but not in the UK, Apple’s new iAd network doesn’t seem to be serving ads to people in the UK.

I am not sure if Apple are actively selling inventory in the UK, or if they even have plans to in the short term.

I really wish these American-based companies would clarify when things are U.S. only. Apple said that they had a lot of ads, but I haven’t seen one. So if I had created an app with a primarily non-U.S. audience, hoping to monetise it with iAd, I would be very disappointed.

Apple aren’t the only ones that have a habit of forgetting 6.3 billion people. At Google I/O, they said that everybody attending would have access to AdSense for mobile (which was in closed beta) but on signing up it said U.S. only. There was also a big press release saying that Google Voice was open to everyone. But it was still limited to the U.S. Funny definition of everyone. They did correct it later, but still, it’s not on!

Google.com from the UK

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Today is 4th of July. There’s a Google doodle for it, but you wouldn’t know if you’re from the UK. Google.com is completely different if you are coming from a UK IP address. There is no 4th of July doodle, and what’s worse, you will get entirely different search results, with UK sites having more prominence. The results are slightly different from google.co.uk, as well.

I think it would be better for the regionalised Googles to be the same no matter where you come from, and that includes the US Google.com. What’s the point of the “Go to Google.com” link if going back there isn’t the real American Google?

I haven’t taken a look at Google.cn or Google.com.hk!

Rant over!

Ubuntu annoyances

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For some strange reason, the Ubuntu people decided that the latest release should mimic Mac OS as much as possible. The default background is now purple, eerily similar to the Mac OS default. And they decided to move the buttons to the left hand side, just like on a Mac. Which is annoying. Not because I am used to Windows, but because if you were used to previous versions of Ubuntu, you’d be very annoyed.

Rant over, here’s how to fix it: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/13535/move-window-buttons-back-to-the-right-in-ubuntu-10.04/

I have decided to switch to Linux my equal-primary platform, as I am going to be developing my next project using open source tools. I may as well use an open source operating system as well. Also it was an excuse to buy a bigger, better, faster (but probably not stronger) hard drive.

That is all.