My latest issue with them resulted in more than a week of technical issues and wasted time. It was only resolved when I moved my domain to a different company. I was further irritated when they billed me for the domain, that had been transferred to another company a month earlier, and forced me to fill in a form and fax it across the continent to be reimbursed.

A word of advice for 1&1 customers trying to setup or change GLUE (nameserver IPs) for their domain. After making changes to your subdomains ns1 and ns2.yourdomain.com, you must go into the settings for yourdomain.com and click “update” to start the update process. Otherwise nothing will happen and your GLUE will not be updated, and sometimes even this doesn’t work. Best of luck.

This is an update for people trying to use MMS / picture messages on their Telus iPhone. If it still isn’t working you’re not alone. After nearly three months we are without a solution, and worse Big T isn’t even sure of the problem yet.

I posted this information on Howard Forums a week ago:

-The issue has a KIT (known issue ticket) with hundreds of customers attached, this is likely only a very small fraction of those affected.
-Only [some] CDMA –> HSPA accounts are affected, and only iPhones. New accounts appear to be fine.
-Telus has known about the problem since November 20, and Operations has been working with it since.
-Up and ups at Telus have been alerted about the issue and its a ‘priority’.
-They couldn’t figure out what’s wrong, so they had to contact a third-party. Sounds like its Openwave since they control MMS gateway.

And the biggest news is that the KIT promised more information this week. So hopefully tomorrow or early next week we should at least know what the problem is, and hopefully see a fix.

But more than a week has passed and no update is available. I am extremely irritated by how closed Telus has been on this issue. I’ve spoken to more than a dozen reps that, while friendly, have been given absolutely no concrete information about the problem. I want to know what the problem is yesterday and I want a solution now.

Look. I’m not one to complain about paying for things. I understand that nothing is free, and someone is paying for services I use even if they don’t cost me anything. But this is 2010 and TV listings are everywhere. I can go to canada.com and get listings for free, or stop at the gas station and grab a TV Guide for free (this is same company that’s making us pay for EPG). Forcing us to fork over $19.95 USD just so we can use the listings in EyeTV is absolutely ridiculous. Its not a huge expense, but the irritation of the whole process just puts me off.

Making the situation worse is that most Canadian cable providers encrypt their digital channels. So even with the listings I can still only watch and record in standard definition. The experience is just dismal in comparison to what’s available in the US (for almost nothing or nothing at all). I won’t be purchasing a subscription. Best wishes for those of you who decide to get one.

If anyone is considering creating Canadian EPG alternative, please contact me and I will provide help and server resources.

I finally got an iPhone and I’m loving it so far. Everything is working swell, except for MMS (picture messaging) with other Telus clients. Its a quirky situation:

• I can’t send MMS to other Telus clients
• I can receive MMS from other Telus clients
• I can send an receive from non-Telus clients (Rogers, Fido, Bell)

I don’t know what’s going on at Telus. They have been very friendly and understanding on the phone, but the data department seems a little brain dead on the issue. Its a “known issue”, but it hasn’t been resolved. They also closed all the tickets related to the problem without a fix. The rep I spoke with today said I should “check from time to time”. That’s not really an acceptable solution, but I have received a credit for %50 off last month and the promise of another if the issue isn’t resolved.

So no progress yet, and my only suggestion would be to email pictures instead at this point. Are you having the same problem?

Also I’ve attached the latest Telus Carrier Update file (5.1) for others who are on the troubleshooting journey….

Here are some complaints I’ve heard:

• I don’t like the new wall
• I can’t see all the stuff on my profile now
• I can’t find x or x, and I don’t know where x went
• Its too wide and theirs too much whitespace

At first I was complaining too. When I stopped and looked at the changes objectively, however, I realized that all of these complaints were drop dead stupid. The new wall is an improvement, it consolidates the massive amounts of information people share on Facebook into one easy to read cornucopia of awesomeness.

The Facebook developers took out all the boxes that applications made and put them on their own tabs. They’re still easily accessible, but without having to scroll for decades or wait an inexplicably long time for profiles to load.

People are having problems finding things because they’re still thinking about the original interface. Let go. Approaching the site as if you had never visited makes it easy to figure out, its really well laid out if you forget about the weird conventions of the old UI.

The width makes way for new, better ways to organize information on Facebook pages. It also allows for that whitespace, which we really should love. Most people prefer living and working in open and clutter-free enviorment, so why not Facebooking? 

The reason comes back to what I was talking about before, the status quo. People are used to the old Facebook, they like the old Facebook. Some have even vowed to stop using the site over the change. Its time to forget all that hate and move on.

You know what I hate? Junk mail. And starvation. And cancer.

The first issue is small problem with the new editor that I described on the MyBB Community Forums.

The width of the editor (when composing a PM at least) is a problem for people running fixed width themes. The width really should be editable in the template or with CSS. I don’t think this is possible right now, can we make this change?

As seen on my fixed width template, and on the MyBB Community Forums, the editor causes problems where pages are squished and elements overflow. 

This is just a suggestion, but it would save a lot of grief for people making themes for their own sites or distribution.

Some good discussion ensued, but it doesn’t look like anything will be done before 1.4 final. Now I, and other theme developers, are left find work arounds or introduce inconsistency into MyBB’s otherwise fantastic interface. I’m investigating methods like a javascript or plugin based patch, but these will likely delay the release of my two fixed width themes N.Design and Dark Intentions. Please hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion for these problems.