Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of products and services.

Reviews

USPS Priority Mail is anything but that

USPSRecently mailed a package with Priority Mail, and it didn’t arrive at its destination on time. All the USPS website would tell me is that the shipping info was received. When I called them 7 days later — remember, Priority Mail is supposed to be a 2-3 day delivery — I told them I had a shipping/label number and asked what happened to my package. They couldn’t tell me anything. Their official answer was: “We can’t track Priority Mail packages.”

What’s the point of offering a tracking service if you can’t track it?

So I asked them, is there a way to start an investigation, and find out what happened to that package? What if it’s lost, what if someone stole it? What happens now? Their answer? “We can’t investigate Priority Mail packages. We can only investigate Express Mail packages.”

So I asked them what weight is carried with all of their “official” notices that say that tampering with or stealing postal mail is a theft, and is punishable under the law, etc. If there’s no way to tell where a Priority Mail package is, and they’re not willing or not able to start an investigation, does that mean people can go ahead and steal Priority Mail packages? No answer there.

There you have it. Not only is Priority Mail more costly than First Class Mail, not only does not take 2-3 days for mail to get there (it usually takes a week and the USPS only offers excuses when that happens), but the tracking service is non-existent, and you can’t find out what happened to your package if it never arrives at its destination.

What lesson are we to draw from this? My take on it is that Priority Mail is inferior to other shipping services out there. It may be cheaper than UPS or FedEx, but the packages can get stolen, they can get trampled on, they can be late or never arrive at their destination, and the USPS won’t care.

Updated 11/14/2007: I held a book drawing here, and one of my readers won it. After mailing the book via Priority Mail to him, the envelope got there damaged, opened and empty. We know we sealed it properly right at the post office and paid $8 to ship it. To add insult to injury, the message stamped on the envelope from the post office in his town that said the envelope was received opened and damaged. So not only did they damage my package and lose the book, but they lied about how the book got to be “lost” in the first place.

Updated 12/13/2007: The USPS has managed to top its previous performance. It has now taken them 13 days to deliver a local package to a distance of 25 miles.

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Reviews

Google Groups gets a makeover

After Google launched the new Reader, I couldn’t help thinking they might just give Groups a re-design as well. My hunch was correct. Brett Lider announced a couple of days ago on the Official Google Blog that a new version of Groups is currently in Beta. It looks a little nicer, but beyond that, no extra functionality was included. Oh yes, there was. There’s now a drop-down menu at the top (Ajaxified) which displays the groups I’m subscribed to without needing to visit a separate page.

The new Google Groups

Beyond that, I think the old version of Groups made better use of the space on the page. When I log into the Groups Beta, my groups get grouped in a right-hand column, and since I’m subscribed to more than 10, the page ends up stretching down with lots of white space in the main column and the groups squished in the right column. It just doesn’t look good.

Overall, I think they’re going in the right direction with the new version of Groups, but it still needs work, particularly in the page layout. I just don’t think enough time was devoted to thinking through the functional areas of the Groups, and how they need to be arranged on the page.

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Reviews

Clean your computer with CCleaner

CCleanerI tried CCleaner, a wonderful little freeware app that will clean temp files and other unused files, registry keys and cookies, on three separate PCs, and I’ve come to rely on it already. Two of those PCs were XP Professional machines, and one was a Windows 2003 Server running on VMWare Enterprise as a virtual machine. It did a great job on all three. It gave no error messages, it just cleaned things up nicely.

When I ran it on my first machine (at work), it found over 300 MB of files it could safely delete. Then I ran it on the server (also at work) and it found about 50 MB of files (granted, this was a new install, only days old.) Then I ran it on my laptop at home, and it found over 500 MB of files. I took a few screenshots for you to see. I like the fact that the CCleaner is very customizable. I can tell it what to delete and what to leave intact. I particularly like that I can specify which cookies to keep, and which to delete. To do the same yourself, go to Options >> Cookies. This means that I can keep a set of “safe” cookies, for sites I like and visit often, and delete all the rest. It’s wonderful, because it means that I won’t have to re-type my login information after running CCleaner.

CCleaner - Main Screen

This is the screen where you specify the registry scanning options:

CCleaner - Issues Screen

This is the screen where you tell it what cookies to keep, and what cookies to delete:

CCleaner - Cookies Screen

I highly recommend CCleaner. It works as advertised, and doesn’t cause any problems. A word of warning though. Before running it on my XP Pro machines, I created System Restore points, and I advise you to do the same before running it. (There is no such option on Windows 2003 Server.) Although CCleaner caused no problems whatsoever on all three machines where I used it, freak accidents are possible on Windows machines, and it’s good to have something to fall back on.

By the way, I think it’s a great idea to create System Restore points before you install any piece of software. It’s just good practice. That way, if something goes wrong, you simply restore your computer and move on, no harm done. Don’t rely on Windows to create the restore points automatically. I found out the hard way that sometimes you simply can’t restore from those points. Manual creation of restore points is the safest bet.

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Reviews

Google Reader changes for the better

I used Google Reader several times yesterday, as I’ve been doing for the past several months, keeping track of the feeds I like to read. Then I read this entry on the Google Blog, telling us that they’ve just launched a new version of the Reader. When did that happen? Wow, that was quick! They launched a brand new version in just a few hours, propagating the change across all their servers.

The new version is much better than the previous one — which worked great, don’t get me wrong — but was not as polished and easy to use. The major changes in this version are obvious: all of the feeds are listed nicely in the left column, and if new items are available, the feed title is bolded and the new items are counted in parentheses. The text formatting for the feed items is also much nicer.

Another cool feature is the Share option, which lets you mark feed items for sharing, and puts them onto a separate page, all your own, with a feed that people can subcribe to. That’s cool! So I don’t have to Star the items that I use, then copy and paste the OPML onto my blog. Now I can just manipulate the feed and display it as I want, wherever I want. But I see that the option to share my starred or tagged items has disappeared. Where did it go? Is it gone for good? (If it has, that’s a bummer, and I’d like it back.)

Finally, I see that the Email feature has been placed next to the Add star and Share options, and the “Blog This!” option has been taken away. If you’re not familiar with it, it would let you blog about a feed item right in your Blogger account. But people didn’t bother to edit the entries, instead choosing the leave the form fields pre-filled with a quote from the post. They’d hit the Publish button, instantly turning their blog into a splog. I can see why Google did away with this.

All in all, a good, solid upgrade. I’m looking forward to using the new Google Reader on a daily basis from now on.

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Reviews

Want to watch your recorded shows and movies over the Internet?

OrbWith all of the media hype surrounding Slingbox, and the Sony LocationFree Player, an easy and inexpensive (as in FREE) solution is getting overlooked: My Orb. But that’s to be expected. They haven’t advertised heavily, and they’re fairly unassuming. But don’t think that their product is underrated, because it’s not.

To use it Orb, all you do is install their software on your desktop system (only works with Windows XP machines), and it’ll let you access your photos, music and movies right through the Internet, right away. It’ll even stream your music in Windows Media Player or Quicktime streams, depending on what computer you access your files with (PC or Mac).

I wouldn’t have known about it myself, except that I bought a Creative web cam for my laptop, and found the software bundled onto the install CD. I tried it, and it really works like a charm! I simply installed the software, set up my account at My Orb, and logged in. All of my photos, music and videos were listed right in my account. I was able to stream my movies from my home machine, and watch them over the internet, at work. And if you’ve got a Media Center PC, it’ll even let you access your recorded TV shows, or the live TV stream. Cool!

And, what’s even cooler is that they’ve got this service called Orb Secure, which they make available for free to Creative web cam buyers, that’ll let you use your camera as a surveillance device. You can access the camera’s video stream at any time to see what’s going on at home, or even better, use it as a motion sensor, and set it to record video for a pre-set amount of time whenever movement is sensed. What’s more, this service will even email or SMS you whenever motion is detected. You can then watch either the live video stream, or the recorded video portions, right on the Orb site, and take action if needed (i.e., call the police). How cool is that!

So why spend your money on yet another piece of hardware? Use what you already have, and get your money’s worth. Look into Orb.

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