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;

• Joining a network shouldn’t automatically change your privacy settings
  There are a lot of options that lets you fine tune your privacy at the privacy settings section, but you probably know that already :) Anyway, I tuned everything, than I joined the network of my university and – almost – every setting on that page automatically changed to allow the members of my university network to see everything on my profile! Approximately 1000 people are working in my university and more than 20000 students are having education. There is obviously no chance I’m knowing them all :) Also, since anyone can join the network even if they are not affiliated with my university in any way, anyone can see my full profile, wall etc., regardless what I set on the privacy section. What is the point of “friending” then? I don’t know.
• There should be a way to moderate wall posts before they get published
  I know, this may be a stupid wish for a network like Facebook, but I really would like to have more moderation rights on my wall. We all know that not everybody in our friend list is really our “friend” (who has 500+ “friends” in real life, right?). We sometimes add people we see on the corridor to our office or people in our neighborhood just to be polite, who we just say “hello” or “good morning” once in a while. Can he/she turn into a jackass one day? You can’t be sure. Also, you may have bad times with your real friends, who can post things you may not want to see on your wall after your argument. It’s possible to think more scenarios here. What I’m trying to tell is just being able to remove posts from my wall is not enough, I should also be able to approve posts before they show themselves up on my wall. Being able to customize the group of people allowed to post on my wall with lists (rather than all my “friends”) could also work, I guess.
• Navigating through pages are difficult than I thought
  I don’t know what it’s like before, but I found the new design difficult to navigate. I think clicking on the “Facebook” on the header should take me to the home page (or refresh the homepage, if I’m already there) rather than just refreshing my news feed. Also, I didn’t like pop-up boxes and I’d love to see a direct link to my friend list somewhere on the top navigation menu.
• Applications are not descriptive enough
  There usually are very limited information on the application pages about their functionality and how they are handling privacy.

I’m looking for a useful Greasemonkey script for Facebook, like to hear your suggestions. Also, I’d like to hear which applications you are using. Couldn’t find anything interesting by myself. Looks like there are tons of alternatives if you are MMORPG gamer, but there is nothing really interesting if you are not :)

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?”.

I called the office and they told me that all I need is a service report stating that my item neither can be repaired, nor can be replaced under the terms of its warranty. So, I went back to local Philips customer service center and insisted them to take my earphones for repairs and told them they should check my situation with their head office at Istanbul.

Well, I have to admit that I lied to the lady at the service center :) I told her that, after I blogged about my problem, somebody from their Istanbul head offices contacted me and told me that I should take my earphones to our local service center, then they will solve my problem. In reality, although my blog has been visited several times by some people from Philips (first an IP from Germany, then USA and lastly from Turkey), nobody had called me from their Istanbul head offices.

Another week passed by and I’ve got a call from Philips head office at Istanbul. Representative on the phone told me that my earphones has been fixed and I can get it back from my local service center. When I asked her “Both your local service center here and your representative on the toll free customer care line told me that the Philips does not produce spares for the part missing on my earphone. How could you find this part?”. She told me that they’ve tried really hard for my satisfaction.

Am I satisfied? Of course not. This should happen before I wrote about my problem on several places on the net and decided to go to commission of consumer problems arbitrators. Resolution should came at the moment I entered in their local service center, not a month later.

In the end: spares miraculously found and my earphones has been fixed free of charge, which feels like a happy ending.

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.

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.

Because there were some disagreements between Turkcell and other operators about whether transferring numbers between different operators should allowed or not, licensing process of 3G delayed more than a year and has not been accomplished until last December. Although every operator got a license now, we are still lacking a 3G signal and, according to Mr. Yıldırım, we have to wait till the calendars show June.

Microsoft’s Mehmet Tunçkanat has given us a little more interesting speech. He talked about cloud computing, Live Mesh, Azure, Surface, Silverlight, IE8 etc. Interesting thing is, although he talked about mobile technologies and they were about give a free PDA to the one of the attendees, he never mentioned the Windows Mobile’s last year achievement, and its’ upcoming version v6.5. Also, while everybody else in the world is talking about it, he hasn’t said a word about Windows 7.

At the end, I liked the idea of touring with tech industry professionals talking about future with students. But, being limited to two companies, especially not seeing anybody talking about web development and technologies was a disappointment.

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.