RonMertens.com

I just received a large parcel in my mail. It was from Microsoft (which was suspicious at best). I decided to take the risk, and open it.
It was this large cylinder, saying that “the writing is on the wall - Microsoft Software as a Service”. Inside was a spray-paint can (!) with a small leaflet telling me that’s it’s time to tell the world that I know it too (that the writing is on the wall) with my name and instructions to cut out my name and spray it.

I really got annoyed. This is a huge waste - I’m sure thousands in Israel got this junk (I never actually had anything to do with Microsoft Israel - beside buying my copy of Windows XP). Probably 90% of it was thrown right away. And it’s probably really damaging to our environment - a can of paint!

Obviously I only had one option - to phone Microsoft and tell them they are annoying, they kill our planet, and should be ashamed. The phone number on the box lead me straight to the delivery company, who was as annoyed as I was, and said he doesn’t know why everyone phones him and asks whether his is Microsoft (which he is not).

So I opened the small leaflet, and found another phone number. I phoned, pressed 3 like was told to do in th leaflet, and I got a nice many with an Indian accent explaining to me that I got to the Calcuta technical support. I love india - but this guy didn’t really help me out.

At this stage I got even more annoyed, and e-mailed YNet and NRG which I hope will publish this in the ‘eco’ sections (YNet phoned me, so I hope they will indeed do something).

I then phoned microsoft again, but didn’t press the ‘3=Calcuta’, and then I got to a hebrew speaking microsoft-lady. She was nice, and later they phoned again and listened to my complains. I hope someone got my message.

So now I have this stupid can of spray on my desk (colour royal blue, or azul real). Anyone wants it?

My latest toolbar (yeah, another one) is one for AdSense publishers. This one is more interesting than the last ones, because I actually coded a component in there to display your latest AdSense stats. A mini AdSenseLog, which is free… It turned out pretty cool I think

AdSense Toolbar

I became really fascinated with those toolbars you can easily create…

So here is my latest - the Gadgoolbar (the Gadget toolbar). Several gadgets RSS feeds and some other nice links and stuff. Enjoy! And share with your friends

R.

I had my birthday a couple of days ago…

To celebrate, Michal took me to a ‘dinner and a show’. Or actually a movie and dinner. So we went to see Indiana Jones IV (secret of the crystal skull or something like that). Anyway it was a fun movie! Recommended (if you like that sort of thing, anyway). The dinner was great too.
Happy birthday to me

I’ve build a toolbar for oled-info. Now you can get all oled news, and links and all in your browser. I’ve built it using Conduit, which is a terrific platform for toolbars. Cool!
Check it out!

This is strange - today I found a “google alert” message in my gmail spam… I think their spam filter should be smarter than that!
The annoying thing is that I get around 300-400 spam messages a day. I try to look at them, but sometimes I can’t find the time, and after a few days I just delete the whole bunch. I hope I’m not missing on anything important.

Yeah, I’m really into widgets now

So I made a widget for oled-info, with the latest oled news. It’s pretty neat. I used the widgetbox platform, which was dead easy to use, and can be installed in many places, including iGoogle, netvibes and facebook. Anyway if you wanna stay updated with oled news, get the widget here.

You can also embed the widget in your blog or web site.

Today we have released the TripTouch travel widget. It offers almost all the content and services in TripTouch (travel guide, restaurants, events, activities, travelers, utilities, accommodation) and can be used in personalized home page like iGoogle or netvibes. It’s pretty cool, I think
Check it out here, and tell me what you think…

So we’re back from Jacob’s ladder festival! It was really great! I really like that country and Irish folk music, and there was some good shows in there.

It’s also cool that we know so many people there! This year Rani joined (I thought she deserves a mention - she’s one of the few who read this blog…).

We had a lot of fun! Can’t wait for next year…

Too long have I written “oled-tech” kinda news in my blog. So some personal matters now…

The big news obviously is that we (Michal?) are pregnant - we’re expecting a baby girl in 3 months! This is both exciting and scary and hopefully all will be well. What can I say more?

I decided it was time now to tell the world (or the part of it that reads this blog). Obviously if you read this blog you probably know me and so you heard this one already, so no point in me blabbering.
Other than that? We’re going tomorrow to a cool folk-music (Irish/British/County) festival (Jacob’s ladder) for 2 days which will be a hoot I hope! yee-ha!