Rubénerd!

As I blogged about in February, Borders had clearly seen better days in Australia and are now in the process of closing down. I headed into their Bondi Junction store today to grab some bargains, and to explore a familiar setting one last time.

Getting there

Of course, I couldn't have timed my expedition any worse! Bondi Junction is served by the Eastern Suburbs and Illawara line, which CityRail decided to perform track work on this weekend. Unlike most of the industrialised (or developing) worlds where train work is done overnight so as not to inconvenience ticket holders and taxpayers, CityRail regularly performs such work in broad daylight. Worse still, they replace eight double deck carriage consists with single buses that seemed to arrive and leave as they pleased. I've been to Canberra, and if they can operate buses to a fixed schedule, then surely an operation as large as CityRail could!

To their credit the Bus Marshals couldn't have been friendlier, and the one who served us at Central bore an uncanny resemblance to TechTV and TWiT luminary Leo Laporte. They could have been separated at birth, and raised in different countries. But I digress.

Being there

For those not from Australia, Bondi Junction is one of these upmarket mega shopping centres you would expect to find on Orchard Road or Jalan Ampang. The Borders itself is located at the end of one of the buildings. At its peak it was operating over two floors, though the top floor was empty by the time I got there.

Much of the stuff had already been sold (including a substantial amount of furniture!) but there was still enough there to occupy my time for a while. A couple of friends from my university and I explored the manga and computer book sections without much success, in the former were series we'd never heard of and plenty of Ken Akamatsu which we've all read but would never admit to (whoops), and in the latter there was almost nothing but thick blue Microsoft training tomes remaining! In year 11 and 12 I had to do several assignments in .NET, so I know of those books all too well!

Walking around with most of the shelves empty, burnt out light bulbs on the storefront sign, carpets askew, posters torn and hanging at weird angles, empty powerboards, hazard tape across entire sections, row after row of boxes... it felt eerily dystopian, like the rapture had happened for real this time.

Buying stuff there

I left with three manga volumes overall, for $18! That's a tad more that I would spend on a single volume in Kinokuniya or any of the small comic book stores in town! One was a copy of The Star Trek Manga which I disgust myself as a Trekkie for not knowing that it even existed! I don't remember the female characters being quite so... shapely, but the caricatures of Spock and Kirk are eerily accurate!

The other two were the first two volumes of Shakugan no Shana; I absolutely loved the anime with its Rie Kugimiya voiced, ultra cute zettai ryouiki heroine, but as is typically the case I was told by many a fan that the manga was better. Flipping through the books while waiting in the queue I could tell the graphics and art are just gorgeous! :)

You may recognise her on my site from the heading image for my OpenInternet post series... a spooky coincidence given Telstra's latest filter move! But I digress.

Now if only I had arrived there sooner, or had the trains been running as they should have been, perhaps I could have snagged some K-On! I mention this because one of the employees I talked to claimed two people between them had emptied out all the stock of basically every manga volume that Kyoto Animation had since got their hands on. You know the ones of which I'm referring ;).

With our recent move back to Australia it was mighty tempting to purchase some genuine Borders bookshelves or some of the signs that graced them, but money is a little tight for us right now (international moves and taxes are fun!), and given I had to get a CityRail replacement bus home with less space to breathe than a sardine tin, I wouldn't have been able to transport them home even if I wanted to! The only sign I was tempted by was a giant white on black ANIME AND MANGA sign, though some of the letters were scratched up. In hindsight it may have been nice to have anyway, just for nostalgia. I'm a sucker for that you see. Oh well.

Reminiscing about stuff over there

Granted it was in their branch at Wheelock Place in Singapore, but I spent a large amount of my childhood exploring Borders. I can still remember when they first opened there with much pomp and celebration, and how crazy my little mind thought it was to have a bistro in a coffee shop! Sure Meg Ryans in Brisbane where we'd lived previously had coffee in the shop, but I had a smoked salmon and sour cream pizza with capers and onion, right next to the non fiction books!

Kinokuniya across the street in Ngee Ann City (the red building with Takashimaya) had a wider selection of books, particularly technical manuals, but Borders felt cozier. I bought (and read!) my first O'Reilly programming books in their computer section, and bumped into my first crush there. When high school came around and much of my cohort were experimenting with nighclubs and alcohol, I was spending my Friday and Saturday nights with my good friend Felix Tanjono exploring until they closed at 11pm. When my mum had those brief breaks from her chemotherapy in the 12 years she was having it, we'd make it a date and wander around there together.

I know it's not politically correct or cool to like chain stores, but Starbucks and Borders and Ikea were where I grew up. I'll be sad to see Borders go.

A new press release from Virgin Australia says the company has "signed a landmark agreement which will enable them to establish a long-term alliance". Be afraid, be very very afraid?

For those who didn't understand the heading, it was a play on the No Way BA/AA campaign, headed up by Richard Branson of all people! And while I'm in italics here, the photo above is of a Singapore Airlines 777-300 series plane taken by Juergen Lehle and uploaded to Wikipedia.

It was suspiciously pro-lawnmower ~ Marge Simpson

The points from the aforementioned press release:

Co-ordinate schedules between Singapore and Australia and beyond to provide seamless connections

I guess that could be useful, though a last resort option if I couldn't book SIA all the way. Hey, I just made a rhyme. Wouldn't it be great it made and rhyme... rhymed? But I digress.

Offer reciprocal frequent flyer programme benefits and lounge access;

My sister and I basically grew up in airport lounges. Well okay a bit of a stretch, but we lived all over the place and had to go between them constantly. We've been in them all, and SIA lounges are by and away the best. Well okay a bit of a stretch, but the point stands. I feel as though I've said that somewhere before.

The idea of cashing in on tons of SIA Solitaire points for domestic Virgin Australia flights would be appealing though, again provided I couldn't book SIA all the way.

Engage in joint sales, marketing and distribution activities.

Most people I talked to (all three of them) thought Virgin Blue's marketing was creative and edgy, but I found it face-palmingly embarrassing and hollow. A company advertising themselves with smiling faces and claiming to make the air fair by cramming seats even closer, charging for bottles of water and electronic checkin machines that failed more often than they worked for me came across as just a wee bit disingenuous. To be fair, Jetstar's advertisements with super hip young women in bikinis jumping around a beach shouting "thank you Jetstar!" -- presumably after surviving their brush with a tightly packed, pressurised, cylindrical sardine tube -- are perhaps even more insulting to the intelligence of their customers.

I guess the adage applies, you get what you pay for. What was the point in this? Oh yeah, I hope SIA's marketing isn't sent down this path!

None of that sounds too scary...

That's because I saved the first point for last. Put your tray tables up and assume the brace position by locking your arms under your legs or on the seat in front of you.

Codeshare on each other’s international and domestic flights;

This. Is. Horrifying.

Jokes about first world problems aside, if I buy a ticket for an SIA flight and board the plane to find it's Virgin Australia codesharing for them... I'd finally understand why airports have those metal detectors and radiation spewing, carcinogenic full body scanners. I would have a blunt nail file with me, and my resulting rage would not be a pretty sight.

Australian regulations make it difficult (AFAIK) for SIA to fly domestically in Australia so the market for Virgin Australia is there and understandable, but if Virgin Australia started flying to Singapore and replacing SIA flights on some of those routes, the last tiny part of me that still enjoys flying would die forever.

Not to beat around the bush on this, but as a customer there are few companies I hold in as high regard as SIA. They offer the best product, bar none. In the decades my old man flew with them, they only lost his luggage once, and he got a signed letter of apology from the CEO and full compensation. Conversely, he's only travelled with Virgin Atlantic a dozen times, had luggage lost twice, and never got anywhere with the phones. You do the maths.

It would be akin to IKEA doing a deal with Kmart for furniture, or Starbucks with Nescafe. Not that I'm biased, nor am I suggesting (for legal reasons) that Kmart or Virgin Australia or Nescafe are bad, just not my cup of tea. I hope they leave SIA alone, but histories of tie-ups like this are littered with failures, and those who don't learn from history are destined to repeat it, like an onboard entertainment system with the same three movies each flight.

When attempting to bookmark a page this afternoon, instead of the regular login screen and tagging interface I was presented with a notice that del.icio.us had been bought, and that I have until July to transfer my material. Swinging between nervousness and relief!

Let's do the Timeline again

The del.icio.us bookmarking service started in 2003 and I got my account the following year, as evidenced by the fact my login credentials are not a Yahoo ID. In 2005 they were bought by Yahoo, and many of us were excited to see what being owned by a company with substantially more cash and talent would do for the service.

Unfortunately, being a PHP shop Yahoo's first move was to port the entire system from Perl to PHP, which allegedly necessitated the complete redesign of the UI from something that was simple and space efficient, to a Web 2.0 Foo Foo site. At the time Frank Nora from The Overnightscape and I lamented this reversal, but begrudgingly still used it because nothing else matched it.

In 2007 my increasingly bed-ridden mum was discovering she could keep up to date with Column 8 in the Sydney Morning Herald from Singapore, do crosswords, read about ancient civilisations and alternative fashion, and shop from her Gentoo laptop which her generous son had provided ;). Her single column of bookmarks in Firefox however was becoming increasingly unmanageable, so I set her up with del.icio.us and less than six months later she'd amassed a collection greater than mine!

In 2008 when rumours started spreading that Yahoo were looking for a suitor and it would most likely be Microsoft, those of us that had used Passport and other Microsoft internet services at the time were terrified that their ownership of the service would result in further degradation, so we began looking for alternatives. Google Bookmarks existed, but was far clumsier to use and harder to share. Ma.gnolia was an alternative I blogged about that even had a del.icio.us import function, but we later learned of its laughably bad uptime and at one point the even deleted all our data by mistake.

The Slide is The Wide... Screen

Since then we've been further scared by that now infamous slide that unceremoniously placed del.icio.us alongside other services for "sunsetting". We didn't know what that meant, but it didn't sound good.

Fortunately, it was! The two people who started YouTube (this fact is mentioned so many times on their sites, in press releases and on the del.icio.us site its almost lost all meaning) have formed AVOS (not to be confused for that iffy looking cosmetics company that recruits people to sell their stuff) and del.icio.us is their first purchase. Ignoring all the yucky marketing speak drivel, their idea sounds interesting:

The YouTube founders plan to work closely with the community over the next few months to develop innovative features to help solve the problem of information overload. “We see this problem not just in the world of video, but also cutting across every information-intensive media type,” said Chen.

This is what I thought del.icio.us had the potential to do from the moment I started using it. It was like DMOZ but people actually contributed to it on a regular basis, it kept my bookmarks syncronised and backed up across multiple machines, and helped me organise all the tabs of content I was rapidly accumulating in Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox and so on.

Now for the worried bit

I'm glad del.icio.us is no longer stagnent and will be given a third shot at life; I just hope these so called "innovative features" will enhance the platform, rather than sacrificing the simplicity that drew their users to the service. For example, I'd love to see image previews for all sites not just Flickr. Tumblr entries of what people are wearing, for example.

We have until July 2011 to agree to have our bookmarks transferred over to the new service. I'm relieved that I never merged my Yahoo and del.icio.us accounts, but here's hoping I can figure out what my late mum's password was for her account before then.

Google has been caught manipulating search results again, but at least they admitted what they were doing!

Google mostly do no evil :)

Along with IPv6 and cloud computing in their current forms, I've viewed most of my concerns with Google in light of potential government and law enforcement abuses. Whereas even more privacy and security obsessed people than me have been quick to dismiss Google as hypocritically evil, I've been willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Take the street view controversy. While I think Google engineers were short sighted by not closely studying the source code of the software they put on their trucks and drove around the world, I don't believe they did it maliciously. These signals were being broadcast in the open, and while the scale of Google's downloading may warrant further scrutiny, it skips the real issue that people are still broadcasting unencrypted data out of their homes for anyone to gain access to. Rather than blaming consumers (which is always an easy thing to do) however, I place the blame on network hardware manufacturers for selling devices that didn't make this clearer.

Basically, while I've taken issue with some of their policies (labelling Android as "open" and broadly copying the iOS interface, the Verizon net neutrality thing, Eric Schmidt's baffling statements about not having things to hide, pushing WebM and Flash, claiming redundancy is built into Gmail only to have all that redundancy fail), I still believe they're a force for good online and we benefit from their presence. Clearly, Bing does too ;).

Whoopsiedooddle

Unfortunately, it's come to light that Google has been misrepresenting aspects of their search algorithm's operation. After steadfastly and repeatedly denying in court that they use whitelists to inform their search results, both Google and Bing have admitted their existence. These so-called "exception lists" are claimed to consist of sites that Google and Bing engineers deem to have been false positives in their farmer site targeting algorithms.

As with all stories of this nature, how its being reported is almost as fascinating as the story itself. Barry Schwartz at SearchEngineLand catches out Google for denying whitelists are used in their anti farming efforts but otherwise sticks to reporting the facts.

Matt Cutts explained that there is no global whitelist but for some algorithms that have a negative impact on a site in Google’s search results, Google may make an exception for individual sites. But didn’t Matt tell us there is no whitelist for the Farmer update?

Cade Mets at The Register was less charitable and accused Google of lying to European Union anti-trust regulators.

The trouble is that Google spent years refusing to acknowledge that these manual interventions exist – and, in some cases, outright denying them. Google spent nearly a decade telling the world that its search engine was completely objective, and it has only recently begun to freely admit that this is not the case, presumably as a result of the EU investigation.

Ruben gets nervous talking to people

I've talked to people at university and my old work about this, and as usual the opinions are pretty evenly divided between "Google is guilty of denying the true nature of their operations and must be punished", to "Google's exception lists are a valid approach to dealing with false positives, these stories are just sensationalist".

Sensationalist sounds like it'd be a good thing. What a sensation! How sensational! YAYS! The English language is weird.

I'm of the opinion that while Google have been guilty of search result rigging in the past, we don't have enough evidence yet to suggest Google are abusing these exception lists. If they are as benign as they suggest, I'm sure Google shouldn't have any problem with providing us with further details as to their operation. If they remain obtuse, then we have severe cause for concern.

Follow up from my previous post on Borders shutting down in Singapore and Australia. I guess it says it all.

From the Singapore Expo website.

I love Borders. I spent a ridiculous amount of my childhood there, not to mention my money. I know its not politically correct to admit to liking retail chains, but if they go I really will miss them.

The Book is The Word

If you've been living under a rock, or a rather large hardcover book about geology, you may not be aware of the recent news that Borders has entered chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States. A favourite amongst American airline companies that defaulted on their commitments after airline deregulation (thank you Carter and Reagan), chapter 11 protects businesses from their creditors and allows them a chance to reorganise themselves in the hopes they'll be able to return to profitability at some point. Theoretically.

According to Wikipedia, a site that perhaps reduced Border's profits on printed manuals, encyclopaedias and self serving autobiographies:

On February 16, 2011, the company announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing $1.275 billion in assets and $1.293 billion in debts in its filing

Ouch. According to the same article, all of their superstores will be shut down and the number of smaller stores drastically reduced. Presumably if they can make it through the chapter 11 period they'll continue to operate.

Singapore

Of course being heavily influenced by childhood nostalgia, my first thought was whether Borders in Australia and Singapore would be affected.

My sister, parents and I moved to Singapore shortly before Borders opened their now iconic store in Wheelock Place, and as I said at the beginning of this pointless post I spent much of my childhood there. Kinokuniya across the road in the Takashimaya complex had more stuff, but Borders had carpet and nicer lighting. It was huge but felt cozy. I spent many a happy afternoon after school school sitting in their IT section deciding which O'Reilly programming books took my fancy. I loved that they were open so late even on weekends so when other people had social lives and were exploring alcohol and nightclubs, I could go somewhere with my good buddy Felix and just explore. I liked the place, you get my point.

It turns out though that much like Borders UK, Borders in Singapore has no business relation to the presumed parent company in the US. Writers in Singapore acting like the true PR spokespersons that they are were quick to assure readers that the operations in the city state were safe:

Feb 15, 2011
SINGAPORE - Borders Singapore is not closing down its operations here.

Although The Wall Street Journal has reported that Borders Group is preparing to file for bankruptcy in the United States, book lovers need not fret because, since 2008, Borders stores in Singapore, as well as Australia and New Zealand, are owned by Redgroup Retail - an Australian book and stationery retailer - and not the US chain.

Nothing to worry about right?

Australia

Well, maybe not. On the 17th, RedGroup Retail that operates Borders and Angus & Robertson bookstores in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore reported that the were dire straits themselves. Again from Wikipedia:

On 17 February 2011, RedGroup Retail (including the Borders, Angus & Robertson as well as Whitcoulls chains) were placed into voluntary administration with Ferrier Hodgson appointed as administrators.

So it looks as though Borders may be shutting down in Australia after all, and along with the parent company we can presume the stores in Singapore will also be closing. Right? RIGHT?

Well, maybe not. Again from that bastion of journalistic integrity in Singapore known as TODAYonline:

Feb 21, 2011 SINGAPORE - Go ahead and flip those pages at Borders, for this bookstore is unlikely to close anytime soon [...] staff said customers have no cause for concern. The employees believe that the latest reports suggesting financial woes at RedGroup Retail, which oversees Borders here as well as in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, will affect stores located Down Under only.

So it seems we can expect Borders in Australia to go, and many of the Borders stores in the US to go... but not New Zealand or Singapore? Can we trust the here-say of staff being asked in their place of employment? Would the powers that be have even informed them yet?

Clear as mud. Oh well, I need a coffee. At least the Borders in Singapore had the Borders Bistro in store to serve coffee and snacks while I sat there in delight flipping through my Programming In Perl book; in Australia they peddle the wares of the Hillsong Church which is creepy to say the least.

Hey wait... Malaysia?

One other point that I've found scant information on: what about Borders Malaysia? Granted I didn't go there as much because I only lived in Kuala Lumpur for a year, but I did go to their branch at The Curve in Damansara several times. The staff there were super nice, and they had a super impressive manga section, I reckon maybe even bigger than the one in Wheelock Place.

From what I can tell, Borders Malaysia is licenced by the Berjaya Group, which means its also unrelated to Borders USA and to the RedGroup Retail outfit. I think.

This is something different to what I usually discuss here, but I thought it was worth a mention.

For over 12 years my mum underwent courses of chemotherapy and radiation treatment for her malignant cancer in Brisbane, Australia; Singapore; and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

During that time we were with several different insurance companies and health funds, nearly all of which went out of their way to make our lives miserable, confusing and difficult with their road blocks and legal challenges either to the medications themselves or the the ways they were being administered. Ironic considering how insurance companies come down like a ton of bricks on people like you and me if we're late with a premium payment.

Anyway I've noticed people tend to share more negative experiences than positive ones, so since this weblog started I've endeavoured to help tip the balance. When a company treats me right, I like to tell people.

Of all the insurance companies we dealt with, the one that stood out for us was Bupa International who we were with for the duration of her treatment in Singapore.

From their Wikipedia page:

Bupa is a large British healthcare organisation [...] a private company limited by guarantee; it has no shareholders, and any profits (after tax) are reinvested in the business.

At times they questioned the medication my mum was being prescribed, but upon receiving an explanation from my mum's acting oncologist they were nearly always prompt with payments. By insurance company standards, you can appreciate how unusual that is.

More importantly however was they displayed a level of flexibility that other insurance companies didn't, particularly with more unconventional treatments that others either blanketly refused or threw up so many legal challenges that often we'd have to pay tens of thousands out of our pockets and would only be refunded months after the fact. Suffice to say, my mum had exhausted so many treatments in the first eight years that she was on experimental treatments for the last few. The point is, they accommodated when others rarely did.

This of course is an entirely anecdotal post. It should be read as-is without warranties or guarantees. Nothing I wrote should be taken as legal or financial advice. You would be foolish at best and criminally negligent at worst to purchase a service as vital to yourself and your family as health insurance based on what some jabroni babbles on about on his weblog. I absolve myself of all liability, and by reading any of this post you agree to this. You get the idea.

What I can say is Bupa International were the only company we dealt with that treated my mum with respect and took one of the scary variables out of her treatment.

I bring all this up because I'm currently in legal wrangling with some other [areshat] insurance companies and felt compelled to highlight a mob that did a great job. And no, I was not paid for this post.

Alexei Oreskovi over at IT News Australia is asking:

Can the next hottest dotcoms live up to Wall Street's expectations?

Certainly with regards to Facebook: nah. At least, not long term anyway. I'd stake my reputation as the most respected person on Rubénerd.com on it. None of the other writers here have anything on me.

That said, Wall Street doesn't need to worry about being profitable, they'll get a bailout if they screw up, right? Its corporate welfare which (unlike those super evil commies that want it for regular people) is totally okay! Not that I'm cynical or anything. Or cyclical, I don't have a bike yet.

Interesting data from Kobo about sales of eBooks "gifted this holiday" Suffice to say, one author really cleaned up... everywhere :O

Canada
1. "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest" by Stieg Larsson
2. "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson
3. "Room" by Emma Donahue

United States
1. "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson
2. "The Girl Who Played With Fire" by Stieg Larsson
3. "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown

United Kingdom
1. "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson
2. "The Confession" James E. Mcgreevey
3. "The Girl Who Played With Fire" by Stieg Larsson

Australia
1. "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson
2. "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest" by Stieg Larsson
3. "The Girl Who Played With Fire" by Stieg Larsson

Rest Of World
1. "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson
2. "Dead Or Alive" by Tom Clancy
3. "The 4-Hour Body" by Timothy Ferriss

eBooks are, like, books in, like, E form

Now granted this is from a press release. This means:

1. most likely this was done to generate publicity (mission accomplished!)
2. like Apple with iTunes, we have no way of independently verifying this data
3. what is true for Kobo isn't reflective of all eBooks, or dead tree books in general

... but still that's a huge accomplishment for Stieg Larsson, an author who passed on before publishers would give him the break he so rightfully deserved. May he rest in peace knowing that his literary works are making people happy around the whole world.

I've been far too busy to read the books, but I've been listening to audiobooks. In one word:

Wowies

Wowies is a word, right? I'd ask Stieg Larsson given he's an author but... you know.

According to the Federal Court of Australia registry website for tomorrow, the ACCC versus SingTel Optus case has advanced to a directions hearing... whatever that is.

The quote is the quotey quote quotey quotey

9:30 AM Directions

3 (P)NSD776/2010 BRIDGETTE REBECCA STYLES v CLAYTON UTZ

4 (P)NSD1157/2010 AUSTRALIAN COMPETITION & CONSUMER COMMISSION v SINGTEL OPTUS PTY LIMITED

5 (P)NSD1343/2009 RODMAC HOLDINGS PTY LTD & ANOR v ROTRIC HOLDINGS PTY LTD & ORS

Come again?

According to the Glossary of the Legal Services Commision of Rigel 7 website, a so called directions hearing is:

A hearing of directions

While arguably accurate, this description is entirely pointless. According to the far more useful Glossary of the Legal Services Commision of South Australia website, a directions hearing is:

[...] held before the full hearing so that the court or tribunal can give directions to the parties about how the action should proceed.

So, have we made any progress determining whether or not Optus intentionally mislead consumers with their unlimited advertising that I spoke tongue in cheek about last week?

Link arms, don't make them

• FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA, Tuesday, 2 November 2010
• Glossary of the Legal Services Commision of South Australia
• Simpsons Wikia on Rigel 7
• Rubenerd post: Optus Message #Fail