Contributing to the digital divide

Lately it seems to me that more and more companies are contributing to the digital divide with their practices. I may run a state of the art machine, but my connectivity is limited by what I can afford and is available in my area. In other words dial-up of the 56K variety. I have spoken to many online who are hampered by this same stumbling block due to their location. We have started compiling a list of sites that are starting to really annoy us. Here are some recent examples:

Gamespot - owned by Cnet
First every single page is graphics heavy, it takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes for a basic forum page to load. Yes you read that correctly a page that should be nothing more than text. Why is this? I am not 100% sure but I THINK it has to do with those annoying adverts.

Zone Labs -

Yep, the makers of Zone Alarm. What is their problem? Ok, so when i try a file transfer with Opera it may or may not complete. BUT according to their site, one should download with I.E. Why? because it seems that other browsers including Firefox may corrupt the download. BAD show Zone Labs. If you want me to replace my MS preferred firewall with yours, then let me do so with my non MS browser. I will have more to say about Zone Labs in my next Blog - unfortunately. They used to be one of my favorite companies.

Yahoo.com -
Sigh, their new look and upgrade now take forever to load. Trillian had to be patched because of all the new "features" causing system crashes. I am starting to really hate all IMs.

Microsoft - well no surprise there. I have a slow connection and must use the classic mail on MSN. OK I have no problem with that, except that takes forever too. More of the issue is the upgrade etc process. It has nit yet become online only. But it was a pain trying to upgrade online with this old slow machine not running I.E. Add to that they expect everyone to have a credit card. Think about that. What would you do if you had no credit card? Ahh there is paypal right? Yep, except MS doesn't take them. What about an e-check? Nope, they don't take that either. Ok a money wire? Nope. Credit card or nothing. When Word coverts a doc to HTML it does not conform to W3 compliance. A lot of online text editors start getting weird if you try to paste from it or enter the HTML it generates. It is NOT that hard guys. Quit trying to be the owner of the internet and let everyone read stuff.

High schools - I hate to say this, but U.S. and Canadian High schools are adding to the issue. Many now require their students deliver their papers via a website and in .doc or is some cases .pdf format. What does that mean to a student with no machine at home? Hours at the library typing, writing and sending a paper. Same as any other student you say? Not really. One with a computer at home can do so at any time and with no time restrictions except those imposed by their parents. . One with access to the library only must write and send a paper within the hours the Library is open. Oh and most libraries limit time that one may have a computer. For those that do buy a machine they have to then put out the money for the applications that produce the required formats or do as my daughter did for a week or so, spend twice as much time on the paper for pure formatting reasons. I thought the purpose of paper writing was the content not the software format and the students' knowledge of commercial packages?

Neopets - Yes, the kid's site. One must now run the latest flash versions, have a fast connection and who knows what else in order to perform many actions. It is a shame that kids whose parents cannot afford the latest in technology cannot play all the games. What a great message to send to our kids. You need all the expensive stuff in order to compete.

This is a tip of the iceberg. Almost nothing here is crucial to existence, yet. The phone company seems to be moving more and more in the online direction. Which I should point out annoys me no end, how can I get online to check my status when my lines are down? Computer companies in general assume you have online access As I discovered in the almost 2 months I did not after the 98 machine's ports died. Lucky for me CDW, Circuit City and Best buy are all up the road and the library down the road. Companies need to rethink their strategies. If they want to take part in the global economy, they have to take into consideration that a person in a city in South Africa (yes that is where one of the brain-stormers of this was) may not have Vista, a high speed connection, a color printer or a credit card. They should consider not everyone in the world speaks English. (As my French and Danish gaming friends have pointed out.) Remember not everyone can see the pretty pictures that are slowing the load down as my blind friend says (he hates being called visually impaired btw) Not everyone can hear the music that takes forever to buffer as my father points out. I am tired of waiting for Pdfs to load for one small piece of information about my daughter's school arrival times. And last, but not least stop making all the tutorials as videos. Just make it so people who need information can get to it. It's not that difficult.

Microsoft, Digital RIver and other Pains

OK, so the trial version of Office is expired, my daughter needs a word processor, she is used to word. First let me say when the trial version expires, you cannot do anything except view documents. This seems to have affected my ability to print to file even in other applications. That annoys me.

So I suck it up and go off to the Microsoft site to "convert" my product. Digital River runs that side of it. I mutter and fuss and fill out the forms using my husband's credit card (No paypal accepted - that is also annoying, but I'll deal with it). I send off all the info and start checking my account for the confirmation e-mail, nothing. Now it IS Saturday, I mention it to my husband the next morning, He says yeah whenever he has ordered ANYTHING on a weekend it has not gone through till Monday. OK then.

Monday still nothing not even a hey we got the order. I send a note to customer service. Finally a flag is placed on the online invoice with a note there is a problem with the order. I start checking e-mail. Again nothing.

Today I finally get back a note that state the order was cancelled, most likely for one of the following reasons:

1 I cancelled it (I did not)
2. Digital River received no response from the verification e-mail (yeah well, it is difficult to respond to something one never receives)
3. My home address doesn't match the home address on the credit card. (Uh yeah it does at least according to everyone ELSE online including Amazon)

Did I mention that I used to work in data management, including credit card verification and telecheck verification? There are several types of software and some are more sophisticated than others. Some get weirded out if a word is not exactly the same (St. vs Street or even vs St) Some are more forgiving, either way all that do not match kick out a report with the offending record and it is easy to research this. You pull up the order and the on file address and check. Yeah it takes a literate human to do this. Probably all of about a 3rd grade reading level.
I am guessing that either Digital River or their 3rd party verification company is lacking employees with that specialized skill. Perhaps Microsoft should subsidize a literacy program for their suppliers? Just a thought. So, who knows a word processing app that will read and allow us to work with Word .docs? Seems I am in the market.