MIND-BOGGLING: A Day in the Life of the Internet - an Infographic

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A Day in The Life of The Internet via HostGator
Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.

QOTW: UK Cable Company Hits Dead Man With Late Fees, Awesome Viral Complaint Letter Results

In the era of social networking, the power of the complaint letter can be mind-boggling:

This was the week when Virgin Media was forced to grovel publicly after a deceased man's family posted the firm's demand for a £10 "late payment" when his direct debit was denied because of his death.


The new bill clearly states that the direct debit was denied because the payer was deceased, but that didn't stop Virgin from tacking on the late fee. The man's son-in-law, Jim Boyden, posted a picture of the bill on Facebook, which has since gone viral, and had a few choice words for the telco:

I'm really sorry for my father-in-law not paying his bill last month, but what with him being dead and all, it's probably slipped his mind. Some people, eh?

You, however, are to be publicly commended for swooping in with all the sensitivity of a charging rhino and instantly fining him an extra ten pounds for having the unheard of nerve to be dead and therefore being unable to pay you (some people really have no idea of priorities do they? It's your profit first, THEN anything else. The cheek!).

Boyden added that whatever his father-in-law is up to in the afterlife, watching TV on his Virgin subscription probably wasn't on the list:

I might pay it if you can prove to me he's been watching any of your channels in heaven, but given that British Sky Broadcasting is beamed in directly from the clouds I think he's much more likely to be enjoying that. Your infernal cable pipes seem only to come up from the ground (same location as Hell - spooky coincidence) where I imagine you train people in the art of customer service.

I am bitterly disappointed in your attitude, probably automatically generated by machine and unchecked by any caring human heart. The only saving grace is that my father-in-law had an excellent sense of humour and is probably laughing his arse off about this as we type, giving you the Vs, waving ten pound notes around, planning to haunt you and enjoying the content of Sky TV.

Virgin has since apologised and refunded the charge.

Author Pete Blackshaw described this phenomenon in Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000. Virgin may want to buy a few copies for its front office.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech.

Ridding your Chrome browser of Flash

I've been running Chrome for a couple of weeks without Flash and the differences are exhilarating.

• Fewer "disappearing pages"

• Fewer "sick" pages

• Zero "Flash not responding" pages

• Fewer reboots due to memory leaks

Best of all, most video sites no longer require Flash to deliver video streams (using HTML 5, I suppose).

Ready to take the plunge? It's simple. In your Chrome address bar, type about:plugins. You'll see something like this:


Find the Adobe Flash Player section and click any of the Disable links you see. If you have a master Disable link (see arrow), just click that one. Now close your browser and restart it.

My guess is you'll soon be enjoying your surfing experience a great deal more. And, as an added bonus, your security posture will be vastly improved.

WHOA: Mobile Apps Business Expected to Be Double the Size of the Entire Movie Industry... This Year

I really had no idea that revenues from the mobile app business will hit about $25 billion this year -- roughly double the revenue of every movie theater in America.

...The global apps business is expected to make $25 billion in revenue this year, up 62% from a year ago, according to Gartner. To put that in perspective, movie theaters sold less than half that dollar amount at the box office in 2012.

And we have a ton of apps to choose from: Apple’s store now has about 800,000 apps, compared with 700,000 on Google GOOG -0.28% Play, 125,000 on Windows and 70,000 for Amazon.

Yes, business is booming. But it’s also unpredictable. About 63% of the apps used daily now differ from those used daily a year ago. Our attention span is so short these days – and the competition is so fierce – that we soon move on to the latest and greatest app.

On average, we only focus on about eight apps at a time. And we use these apps more than you might think: The average smartphone user spends two hours a day with apps, more than double the time spent two years earlier...

...Where did we find all this free time?

It’s hard to say exactly — if you look at the following graphic, the amount of time watching television and surfing the Web is flat in the past couple of years. Of course, we often have apps running in the background, like music-streaming apps, allowing us to multitask.

So consumption of apps is catching up to television viewing – some might say that’s a good thing, that apps are more productive than watching “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”

...But, as the following graphic shows, productivity apps capture just 2% of our time. Rather, games are stealing the most of our attention...

...43% of our time is spent catapulting angry birds at pigs and fighting monsters...

Thinking about developing your own mobile app? Have at it, but recognize that the odds are long.


Only five of the top 250 app publishers in the Apple Store are "virgins", the rest are reported to be veteran development shops. Electronic Arts, for instance, has dozens of bestselling apps and a marketing budget to match.

But a single good idea -- likes Tetris or Angry Birds, for instance -- can change the game. In truth, it's never been easier to write a software bestseller.

How Search Works: Fighting Spam

Google has introduced a new portal that attempts to clarify how their monumentally successful search engine actually works under the covers. One of the more interesting aspects of their presentation relates to the search engine's "War on Spam" -- bogus content of little or no value that is intended to deceive the search engine to generate traffic (and ad revenue).


It would appear that one of the more recent "innovations" in spam is hacking reputable sites for the purpose of influencing search-engine optimization (SEO) scores. Along with "Watering Hole Attacks," the trend of exploiting legitimate sites to effect malicious ends is certainly an ominous development.

Extremely valuable product review...

If you're in the market for Veet for Men Hair Removal Gel, this particular review may come in handy.

After having been told my danglies looked like an elderly rastafarian I decided to take the plunge and buy some of this as previous shaving attempts had only been mildly successful and I nearly put my back out trying to reach the more difficult bits. Being a bit of a romantic I thought I would do the deed on the missus's birthday as a bit of a treat.

I ordered it well in advance and working in the North Sea I considered myself a bit above some of the characters writing the previous reviews and wrote them off as soft office types... oh my fellow sufferers how wrong I was. I waited until the other half was tucked up in bed and after giving some vague hints about a special surprise I went down to the bathroom. Initially all went well and I applied the gel and stood waiting for something to happen. I didn't have long to wait.

At first there was a gentle warmth which in a matter of seconds was replaced by an intense burning and a feeling I can only describe as like being given a barbed wire wedgie by two people intent on hitting the ceiling with my head. Religion hadn't featured much in my life until that night but I suddenly became willing to convert to any religion to stop the violent burning around the turd tunnel and what seemed like the destruction of the meat and two veg.

Struggling to not bite through my bottom lip I tried to wash the gel of in the sink and only succeeded in blocking the plughole with a mat of hair. Through the haze of tears I struggled out of the bathroom across the hall into the kitchen by this time walking was not really possible and I crawled the final yard to the fridge in the hope of some form of cold relief. I yanked the freezer drawer out and found a tub of ice cream, tore the lid of and positioned it under me. The relief was fantastic but only temporary as it melted fairly quickly and the fiery stabbing soon returned.

Due to the shape of the ice cream tub I hadn't managed to give the starfish any treatment and I groped around in the drawer for something else as I was sure my vision was going to fail fairly soon.I grabbed a bag of what I later found out was frozen sprouts and tore it open trying to be quiet as I did so. I took a handful of them and tried in vain to clench some between the cheeks of my arse. This was not doing the trick as some of the gel had found it's way up the chutney channel and it felt like the space shuttle was running it's engines behind me.

This was probably and hopefully the only time in my life I was going to wish there was a gay snowman in the kitchen which should give you some idea of the depths I was willing to sink to in order to ease the pain. The only solution my pain crazed mind could come up with was to gently ease one of the sprouts where no veg had gone before.

Unfortunately, alerted by the strange grunts coming from the kitchen the other half chose that moment to come and investigate and was greeted by the sight of me, arse in the air, strawberry ice cream dripping from my bell end pushing a sprout up my arse while muttering..." Ooooh that feels good ". Understandably this was a shock to her and she let out a scream and as I hadn't heard her come in it caused an involuntary spasm of shock in myself which resulted in the sprout being ejected at quite some speed in her direction....

So to sum it up Veet removes hair, dignity and self respect...:)

Hat tip: @BritHume.

HOBBY LOBBY COUPONS: Show Your Support for the First Amendment

Michelle Malkin, among others, is encouraging Americans to support Hobby Lobby in its fight against Obamacare's unconstitutional abrogation of the First Amendment (see "Hobby Lobby Won't Violate Faith over Abortion Drugs").

It's going to be a long, expensive fight against Obamacare, and the company can use your help.

If you'd like to show your support with your pocket book, visit Hobby Lobby's coupon page for online and in-store deals.


Hat tip: BB.