Have you ever bought stuff and found out that you bought piece of junk?
Have you ever saw movie that sucks and you felt that just threw your money?
Have you ever read useless book?

Yep, there is a lot of stuff that sucks.
Introducing you new web-site Sux Or Not. Vote for stuff that sucks.

As many of you I heard about Basecamp from Signal vs. Noises. I saw quotes from this blog on many blogs over the Internet. And many complimentary words to 37signals too. Strange enough that their product is useless. Basecamp is project management tool but I was shocked when didn’t find there Gantt charts. What can be more convenient to draw project as Gantt chart? It’s de-facto in project management tools.

Sometime ago I worked as Project Manager. I used MS Project. Yes, it’s not the best tool for software and web-project management tool. But it works ok (it was prior the era of all those web2.0 apps)

I want to control project, I don’t want to think what color scheme I like and all this bells and whistles. That’s the main reason why Basecamp sucks.

The second is the biggest one. YOU CAN’T EXPORT DATA FROM BASECAMP. It’s the killer. I don’t know who’ll trust all projects to one SMALL company? It’s the silliest thing you can do being in business.

1. Your business now depends on this company. Let’s pray that this company will be stable.

2. Your business now depends on basecamp server reliability. Let’s pray that it won’t get down for ever.

3. Your data security in hands of 37signals. Let’s be honest, probability of hacking any well-known web software is more than in-house. You’ll never know that your data were stolen.

4. You can’t use any project data in other application. There is no any damn Outlook synchronization even.

Recently I found web-site WhyBaseCampSucks . There are a lot of reasons and arguments.

There is one thing that I like in BaseCamp though. It’s a loyalty of users. I’d like to have such web-site like WhyBaseCampSucks about my products. Why? Because if there is someone that really really hate your product. There is always someone who love it. Love with possession. If you take a look at BaseCamp community you’ll see that it looks like sect. And Jason Fried its leader.

Only mediocre and bad products have no haters. Haters and followers are always going along.

Money always there. Want to earn money, build something that people hates. It happened to Microsoft, Google and Dell.

Now playing: Clannad - Neansai Mhile Gra

Mac always inspired me. Inspired me of being something hmm …. “different”. I always was a Windows user. I’m not stick with it, I just use it because I always used.

Is it something that I really like or chose? No. I use it mechanically. It like favorite brand of beer or cigarettes (I don’t smoke though). Your drink or smoke it because you got into the habit. Maybe there are better but you don’t want to experiment, you like this one and that’s fits you.

Back to the topic. Mac always inspired me. In the era of Windows 3.11 (anybody remembers that silly system?) Mac looks like something really useful and user friendly.

But I didn’t like it. Because it was sooooooo different. When I was sitting at Mac I just falling into stupor. It’s like you spoke English all of your life and you got into one of Arab country. Maybe there is sense, maybe it’s more useful. But all those hieroglyphs and manner to write from right to left got your down. You just can’t use it. It’s too difficult to you. You need to burn all that you knew and used and start from the scratch. It’s very close to find yourself in UK. Everything is different. The left side traffic kills you. You can’t drive because you always feel yourself confusing what side to turn. You can’t cross the roads because you feel yourself confusing what side to look at. You step into the road, look left, and then look right, cross it spinning your head both sides. Thirty years ago there was duodecimal system with pennies, shillings, pounds. I can’t understand this system completely. I’m sure that there is rational explanation of this system. Like everything weird in UK (I really like this country though).

The same with the Mac. Reason # 1. It’s too different.

Being on Windows side gives me a wide rang of software to choose from. I don’t want to drop software that I use for years. I don’t want to switch to another ones. I like Winamp. I like Total Commander (ex-Windows Commander) and Far (I’m from DOS era and can’t use this funny Windows Explorer). I like Microsoft Outlook, all my emails, daily to-dos and reminders there. I like app that shows me my city map along with yellow pages (there is no Mac version and there is no any on-line analogue). There are a lot of software that for Windows only. The big reason #2 Lack of software

Reason #3 Lack of support. I know that if something happen to my PC laptop I can call to local tech. service and repair it. It’ll not work for Mac. Simply because there is no tech. service in my city. I don’t know how much time it may take for repair.

Reason #4 Expensive. Mac is more expensive than PC. That’s the fact. It’s not so important reason. But when taking into account 3 other reasons – what’s the hell I should pay extra?

I will never switch to Mac. Damn!

Yahoo!!! We’ve finally launched our adorable Googol Deskbar.

The good one tool are back now to the world from the dead.

Now web search became as easy as it was back to 2003. We hope to add many cool thing to this deskbar soon.

Now playing: Kaskade - Brighter Day (Quant Remix)

I love clients. I have to, because I’m in support. I find French the most funniest. You need just to read what they are writing. That’s outstanding.

“If that that will be that then …”

“Can you say me how to make return it is name in the application”

“Is what script with dimensions customer is carried out by you? ”

“Is the inscription part of the customer to alarm it to carry out or it to you me which does it?”

“the software on my waiter which configuration waiter than it is necessary ?”

“Yes pls send by frensh longuage”

Ok, Chinese, German or others also send stuff like this, but it can’t be compared to French one.

 Maybe it happens just for me?

The well-known Google monster spreads his tentacles in almost all areas. A lot of marketers use Google Adwords and that’s really effective. For lots of companies, especially for small ones it’s the major or even the one marketing channel.

I was terrified by though that we depend on Google too much. It’s like Microsoft in the era of PC.

We use Google Adwords for advertising as many other software companies around the world. And on this weekend happened very weird thing. All our ads were stopped. We couldn’t find any reason. Ads were stopped on Saturday. It’s Tuesday now and it still doesn’t work.

Here is the screenshot of our ad campaigns overview before bug occurred. I’ve hided all figures and ad names. It’s a secret 

And here is another screenshot when bug occurred. Zeroes. Far and wide.

When we look in to the billing info we see that payment was accepted.

Support told us that problem that the payment hasn’t been processed. But we know that it has been. After mentioning that fact support told that there is a problem. And this problem is not resolved yet.

I used to trust to such big companies like Google, especially if you pay them for something. But this issue showed me a lot. 4 days of failure. Nobody contacted us yet besides that fact that we were assured that someone will contact us shortly. Great service!

We noticed that our ad stopped by a lucky accident. What might happen if we looked into account a month later as we do usually?

This issue making a loss to us but this is not the big think. How can we trust Google services any more?

Thats great, Gmail now allows to send attacments up to 20 Mb.

Wow! Now I can send my favourites video clips to my friends.

Damn pitty that they can’t. That’s why I don’t like gmail, it cuts almost any attachments. What the reason?

What helps to make good software? I mean really good and innovative?

Everyone developer should know – Beer!

More beer – the better is software. Every good manager should know, no beer – no coding.

We love Ubuntu! Really love! And use it a lot in our office.

Nice red disks are a great embellishment.

And how do you use Ubuntu?