Marcus' Macro Scheduler Blog

I reckon you must be doing something right when an offer of a free upgrade is refused and the customer insists on paying! I’ve been helping Randy Bass out with a whole bunch of WebRecorder scripts. He was an early adopter of WebRecorder, and because of his intensive use, and the fact that he needed to use it with a large variety of different websites, many with complicated structures, it really gave WebRecorder a workout. Early on, this helped us identify a few bugs and areas for improvement and allowed us to test the software with a larger array of different website layouts and html objects, in real-world scenarios. It identified a need for a better tag extraction wizard for example, so that it was easier to extract data from the web page. So while Randy was getting loads of help from us with his script generation, we were getting invaluable testing and feedback which sped up the improvement process.

Randy was about to upgrade to Macro Scheduler 8.0, but as a thank you, I offered to waive the upgrade fee. I felt we owed him. His reply:

“OH NO!! I OWE YOU!!!! I consider you a friend now, and I would like to help support your business! Your help and assistance has been UNBELIEVABLE!”

Wow! Well, Randy, saying stuff like that does help support the business. Feedback like that is priceless. So you’ve got that free upgrade whether you like it or not! Let’s not turn this into one of those comical situations where you argue with your mother over who’s going to pay the restaurant bill (sorry, check, for you US readers)! 🙂

How many times has this happened to you? You’re working on some code and everything seems right. It’s a really simple bit of code. But it doesn’t work. So you check it over again – it looks fine. You can’t understand why it won’t work. You check it over and over and you just can’t see the problem, but it’s jinxed. You start to think you must be going mad, and it gets really frustrating. You want to get this thing working so you keep staring at it but you just can’t see the problem. Eventually you just have to move on to something else, or it’s time to go pick your kids up and you just have to leave it. Next morning, you take a look at that code again, and you see the problem, right there, staring you in the face! Why didn’t you see it before? Or, worse, you ask someone else to take a look and they see the problem right away. Most annoying! I know it’s happened to me loads of times.

For example, we had a support call today where the customer was trying to run an exe with Macro Scheduler’s Run Program command. The script was throwing up an error saying it couldn’t run the file – error code 2 – which is file not found. “But the file is there – I’ve checked the path like a 100 times!” So support hooked up to the customer’s screen using that excellent BeamYourScreen.com service, took a look and saw the problem right away. The filename was wrong. Lots of groans and “Why didn’t I see that?” from the customer. Everyone had a laugh about it, and we were quite sympathetic – it happens to all of us.

When I’m working on a coding problem I hate to leave it. I get really stubborn and won’t stop until I’ve solved it. But if I were honest I’d probably accept that this is often counter-productive. Countless times I’ve been working late into the night, trying to get something to work, and I just can’t see what’s wrong. Finally I just have to give in and get some sleep. Then in the morning I solve the problem in 10 minutes.

Sometimes you just don’t see the wood for the trees, even though the problem is right there in front of you. Sometimes it’s because we’re tired and we need a break. But often I reckon we just think about it too much. The more you think about an issue the more your intuition is clouded.

So next time this happens to you, take a break, clear your mind, do something else, and then go back to the problem later. More often than not you’ll find you solve it straight away. The question is, will I heed my own advice next time it happens to me?

As an aside, I’m currently reading Malcolm Gladwell’s excellent book Blink. Blink is about rapid cognition – solving problems with the unconscious mind – thinking without thinking. I have a feeling there’s an element of that in solving programming puzzles – sometimes I reckon we can spend too long on problems. And with a clear mind we can often solve them immediately.

Check out this Virtual Earth Technology Preview. Drive a car through the streets of Seattle or San Francisco. The database for Seattle contains 10 million images! You can search for businesses and see them on an aerial map. But the cool bit is how you can drive around the map. According to Scoble the guys at Microsoft stuck 10 cameras on a van and drove it around the two cities. They’ll be adding more cities in due course.

As most of you know, we are based in the UK. Those that have called us on the phone will also know that we have a US phone number. It is listed on our contact page. That phone number comes straight through to us here in the UK. We don’t have an office in the US – there is no US mailing address on our contact page – just a US number. We set the US number up a few years ago because we wanted to make it easy for our US customers to contact us, and we realised that many companies in the States don’t allow international calling. Calling outside your country is expensive, and with low, flat-rate calling plans, optimised for mostly local calls you may not even be able to call internationally. Why pay for the option when you hardly ever need to do it? So to make life easier for everyone we set up a US phone number that routes straight through to us here in the UK. If you’re in the US and you call it you’ll only pay for a national call (or local if you are in WA). But you get to talk to us in the UK. Simple!

So, five minutes ago I took a phone call and the guy said “Is this the US office?”. I said “No, you’ve come through to the UK, we don’t have a US office”. He said “So it’s just a mail drop?”. I said “What’s just a mail drop – there’s no US address on our contact page where you saw the number you’re phoning on”. “Ok”, he says. I said “We provide a US number so our US customers can get through to us easily”. He said “Thanks”. I was just about to say “So, anyway, how can I help you?” when I realised that he had hung up. That was it.

So what was all that about? I was slightly concerned that he was a potential customer who was put off when he found out there was no US office. But surely I am being paranoid. He didn’t even give me a chance to ask him how I could help. Perhaps it was a cold caller trying to sell something, and finding we had no US office decided the service or product he was selling was of no use to us. Hopefully the latter, not the former. I certainly don’t want to be scaring customers away. Is it a problem that we don’t have a US office? In nine years it hasn’t been yet! But either way, I was surprised he disappeared without explaining why he had called.

Anyway, if you ever need to call you will find the numbers on our contact page. The only issue with us being in the UK is the time zone – we’re 5 to 8 hours ahead of the US – but because of that we work late most days, so the only time our US customers may fail to catch us is if they call late in the day. So here’s a tip – call in the morning, your time, and you’ll be sure to get through!

I’ve been evaluating various remote support solutions lately. For a while we’ve been using a reverse VNC system, which is free, and works well for the most part. Being a reverse connection there are usually no firewall issues, since the customer adds us as a listening viewer and therefore the connection is from inside out, rather than outside in. However, some very strict firewall policies do actually prevent VNC traffic in either direction. So we have had to seek alternatives.

One of the most well known desktop sharing solutions is WebEx, but at prices starting from $149/month it’s not cheap! Other solutions such as Citrix’s GotoMeeting are more reasonable at $49/month. Another I’ve tried is LogMeIn which costs $99/month and seemed a bit complicated to set up and use. So I’ve been on the lookout for something more affordable and workable.

Well I’ve just discovered BeamYourScreen.com which starts at $19 a month (for a one:one connection – all you need for remote support) and there’s 25% discount to be had for a 2 year subscription. Seems like very good value. I’m currently evaluating it and it seems to work really well. The system is web and Java based so as long as java applets are permitted it should work and shouldn’t suffer the same security issues that VNC often does.

I found BeamYourScreen really easy to set up and use too. Once I had created an account and installed it all I had to do to start a session was click on the system tray icon. That gives me a session URL to give to a guest and a link to send it by email. The guest simply visits that URL and gets connected. Very simple. I’m running a seven day trial at the moment so we’ll see how it goes, but so far, I think this could be the one. If anyone wants to try it out, and get some free remote Macro Scheduler support at the time, let me know 🙂

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