Ali Kuru

Although I had an account at Facebook for quite some time, using it never really interested me before.

Now, I’m about to permanently leave the town which I’m living for 14 years and the university which I’m working for nearly 9 years, thought that I would probably need something more efficient than email and IM for keeping connections with my friends and colleagues. Since all of them are using Facebook (just like the rest of the world must I say, if we consider the network is dwarfing any other alternative with its 400 million users!), using it seems inevitable. So, I decided to came out of the rock I’m hiding under for years, and created myself a profile.

Since every once in a while I read about privacy concerns of Facebook users on the net, I was skeptical about how it handles the privacy, and this was on top of my list of reasons for not using Facebook. However, I found their way of handling privacy more robust than I imagened. It looks like Facebook listens their users voice (“scream” could be more appropriate here), and evolves with their needs, which is good know.

I still have few annoyances about the service though; (more…)

After six years of tiring course work and boring lab studies, I’ve successfully defended my dissertation at the 23^rd of last month, and welcomed 2010 with a new title; “Doctor of Philosophy”.

Now, I’ve dedicated myself enjoying the unusual emptiness in my life, which feels eternal for the time being but will last with the beginning of April :/ Military service is mandatory for every healthy men in Turkey and I have postponed it to date because of my studies. The first week of April will probably mark the beginning of that duty.

There are several alternative ways for serving in Turkish Military depending on your education and in my case it will either take ~6 months if I’m lucky or a whole year if I’m not!

So, please wish me luck :)

This is kind of late reporting and I’m sorry about it. I was really busy at work and couldn’t create much time for an update. Anyway, it is always better late than never, right? So, here is the rest of the story;

A week after I blogged about the Philips customer service’s approach to my problem with my Philips earphones, a friend advised that “Why don’t you file a dispute at the local commission of consumer problems arbitrators at the district governorship? It’s a much more effective way than writing on about your problem on your web, just let the officials deal with them”. And I thought “Why not?”. (more…)

I like Philips, and I’ve never thought twice while buying their goods. Not only I trust their quality, I also recommend their products to everyone around me. But the company officials severed my trust to Philips last week. Here is the story;

I’ve bought a pair of Philips earphones (SHE 3600) 6 months ago and, because they use a weak adhesive material putting it on while manufacturing, the rubber cover of the left earphone dropped last week. Since it is impossible to wear the naked earphone because of the uncovered sharp edges after the rubber cover dropped, I’ve decided to call Philips for help. I thought that 2 years warranty Philips offered is still valid, why not use it?

I called the toll free number written on the warranty and they gave me the number of the local service center.

I told my problem to the Philips representative at the local service center. She told me that “because the dropped part is an accessory, Philips doesn’t produce any replacements for it”. After a few seconds of shock, I told her back; “How could this part is considered as an accessory? It’s impossible to use the earphone without it because of the underlying sharp edges. If it is preventing my usage with its absence, then it is obviously a necessary part for the functioning of the earphone!”. Then I told her that if they are not producing spares for this part, they should replace the earphones. She told me that they can’t replace the earphones unless the sound is problematic or there is no sound coming.

After I felt the dead end, I left the service center and called the Philips customer care again, and told them her response to my problem. The lady on the line approved their approach to my problem and told me pretty much the same things. I told her that it’s written on the warranty that the “whole product, including all parts, is under warranty of Philips”. She told me that the warranty only covers “malfunctions”. Meaning; only sound complaints about the Phillips earphones are considered worth giving repairs or replacements under the warranty, according to Philips.

Well, that sucks.

I always believe that there are little or no differences between products of competing well-known consumer electronics brands and what makes a company “big” in its league is the customer support.

I can understand not producing spares for a product which itself retails between $15-20. But, if you are offering 2 years warranty to that cheap-labored product, you must at least show the courtesy of offering new one instead of lowering your reputation, which doesn’t come easy.

I’ve recently started using Disqus for the handling of this blogs’ comments. Service has really nice features, including integration with Facebook Connect, which unfortunately seem to mess with your statistics if you are using StatCounter or Google Analytics (I’m using both).

There is a solution posted on the Disqus blog and I’ve got a tip for you if you are using WordPress, which will allow you to include the given xd_receiver.html on your blog only when necessary, to reduce the front page size.

If you wrap the given code on the Disqus blog with the WordPress conditional tag is_single(), mentioned xd_receiver.html (and the javascript that its calling) will only included in your post pages, where the comment form should appear. See the code below;

<?php if (is_single()) { ?>
<script type="text/javascript">
var facebookXdReceiverPath='http://alikuru.com/wp-content/files/xd_receiver.html';
</script>
<?php } ?>

If you are allowing your visitors to comment on your WordPress pages too, you might want to change the is_single() with is_singular() ;)

Update: Disqus has launched an update and Facebook Connect caused messy statistics issue seem to reoccur. Here is another workaround.

These screens are installed to show advertisements on public transportation buses at Mersin for a while now, and I was thinking that they are probably powered by embedded Windows. Today, when I was coming to campus, system produced an error on the boot loader screen and I’ve noticed it is running Debian! (Click on the image to see its bigger version)

I’m not sure whether the drivers or the owners of these buses are aware of this, but they are showing a good example of making money by using open source :) Congrats for their clever choice!

Technology tour organized by Turkcell (Turkey’s prominent cell phone operator) and Microsoft was here in Mersin today, where both Turkcell and Microsoft’s representatives try to tell about their future perspectives to the students.

Turkcell’s Gökhan Yıldırım, who is talking about “technology” and still using “Internet Explorer 6” on his notebook, talked about 3G and the technologies they are thinking to build around it, such as media streaming, integration with home and car automation systems, mobile internet etc. I know, if you’re visiting this blog from Europe or U.S., you are probably thinking “what is so new about it?”. You are so right, nothing new about this for the rest of the world. (more…)

According to my birth records, it’s been 30 years since my official hello to the world, so this “Hello” here is not actually coming from me, but from WordPress, which is a software I use to publish this blog.

It is a tradition around programmers to make their software print out the phrase “Hello World” to prove their initial code is actually functioning. You can read more about the idea behind this from Wikipedia.