Because those snazzy Samsung phones don’t like windows explorer to see their files, you go ahead and install the device driver software. All and all installation goes well besides for some error messages complaining about 64bit… You’re thinking “Hmm… I thought the website and box said 64bit compatible.” So those messages go into your ignore box… (This is where you go wrong)

Opening up the program you get one of those lounge beats that you might of heard when you’re installing Windows. They even added shiny buttons and a little flash application to show you how well it’s going to work! Unfortunately this application seems to crash once you click on the first button but still manages to launch the Samsung New PC studio! Woooo! Time to add so…me… fi…l…es? Errr…

So… you press the shiny “connect” button and see that your Samsung Phone is properly connected. Goodies. You select your phone, click on connect and… wait… wait… wait a little bit longer… you get a coffee… Once you get back with your coffee, ready to enjoy the promises made in the flash movie that just crashed. Oh noes. “no response from the device.“. Your reboot your computer, your phone… nothing seems to work (yes, I have tried yelling at it).

Next on the list… Googling the issue… “no response from the device because it is in the initializing stage after booting. try again after the initialization has completed.” 3 very unhelpful results. Crap. Crap. CRAAAHAAAAP. Anyway, while performing this Google search for the issue I did find out that this New PC studio is *not* compatible with 64bit systems. Teehee. The webpage that provided this information also provides a hint about an older version of the pc studio. So I close my eyes, wish for the best  and download samsung pc studio 3.

Ofcourse, before installing pc studio 3 it would be wise to uninstall new pc studio. Right? Right! Going to the control panel I got a pleasent surprise. Tehee. No less than 9 different drivers and/or utilities have been installed by the new pc studio installer. What the f¨ck. Some seem to be copies of one another? And Duh. You have to uninstall each program on it’s own.

In the end… pc studio 3 still doesn’t make it work. In fact, it just got worse. USB drivers failed to work and the program itself kept crashing.

Anyway, if any of you out there happen to have a solution for this issue, it’s would be more than welcome because a lot of people are having this problem.

If you are a real developer, there should be a huge smile appearing on your face. Thanks to coding horror! Get the bumper sticker version of it while they’re hot!

The launch of the new website of “De Kreuners” was announced 2 weeks in advance on almost every radio station, in many magazines and even on national television. Since I’m a huge fan of them (read: they’re alright), I had to endure 2 weeks of sleepless nights, constantly pondering how awesome the new website would be!

As of today, the new website of “De Kreuners” has been made available. But can we call the new website an improvement? Was it really worth all those nights pressing the f5 button repeatedly, hoping to catch a glimpse of it? Read on!

I was driving home when I heard the news on the radio, a young woman, Layla, explained how exhausting it has been to find the right setup, content, pictures and information for the new website. Hearing this, I immediately put the pedal to the metal, ignored a few red lights and raced home.

So I finally managed to open Internet Explorer (read: Firefox sucks), typed in the URI and… Oh noes… What did I see there?

Yep, you’re looking at it. “Untitled Document”. That almost made me cry. Too bad I was soon facing a lot more of “kinks” a professional website bureau shouldn’t make these days.

Ok, so I managed to get over that and tried to look around the website… Wait… the website… where is it? Soon I noticed it was hiding under a huge image which should be addressed as their web site’s header. The monster is 924x450pixels!

Finding out the exact size of that image was a bit of a mess too… it seems like it is hiding behind another huge image, good for another 3 megabyte. This time a PNG that creates the “grungy” border effect. Too bad that 80% of this PNG is transparent and completely useless. Also,I hope the website never reaches a height higher than 3000pixels. or their cool border is going to screw everything up.

Digging a bit deeper, it seemed like the background image has the same lard-ass problem. This one weights about 1 full megabite. At least they tried to save some bandwidth by making it a .gif.

Moving on, the color scheme of the website isn’t bad at all! I’m also pretty happy by the way they designed the menu, it has a nice “feel” and it’s good that they added rollovers. Though, again, after taking a closer look… no alt text filled in. Well, it’s not that it would matter that much since the URL structure doesn’t seem to had a lot of thought either.

Clicking on “Foto & Video” (read: Pictures & Video), I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t find any pictures… Where are these hiding?

Intermezzo: Facing serious download time issues. On the upside, I can go to the fridge whenever i try to open a new page.

After clicking some of the menu items, I got the feeling that every page is the same and is was time to stop browsing this website. If I didn’t like the band, I probably wouldn’t visit this website ever again.

As for the final verdicht: 20/100

(I used sitescore to assist me in making this list: http://queromediashare.com/sitescore/dekreuners.be)

Negative

• No use of ALT tags
• No use of logic pagenaming
• No page title
• No page description
• Website header dimensions are too high
• Overall image size is too large
• No RSS feed of the latest news or gigs
• Invalid HTML & CSS
• No Sitemap
• Overall design is quite basic
• No custom error page
• …

Positive

• Color scheme and the contrast between the colors
• Text links at the bottom of the website
• 1024×786 compatible
• Works in IE & Firefox (read: Firefux)
• All hyper links are working

What can annoy you when browsing a website? Leave a comment!

1. Don’t check your e-mail first thing in the morning.
From now on, I’ll ignore every top-priority e-mail that has been sent to me and read them before I go home. Then I can forget all about it while I walk to the bus stop and wait in the blistering cold for a bus that’ll come an hour late.

2. Commute by taking mass transit or carpooling.
Yeah, with all those friendly people on an overcrowded bus and winter coming up, I really look forward to getting up in the morning.

4. Don’t respond to e-mails as they arrive

What are you saying? Your house is on fire? Well, that’ll just have to wait, I’m really busy cleaning our brand new firetruck!

5. Don’t personal e-mail at work.
One of the few points I agree on…

7. Don’t read papers, e-mail newsletters or distributions lists.
I have better things to do than listen to what people are saying around me. I have work to do? Quickly scanning through an e-mail will surely save me more time than getting into a discussion with one of my co-workers.

9. Leave meetings when they are over due.
Screw you boss I’m going home, over due meetings is where I draw the line.

10. Ignore the phone
Oh yeah they called. Someone’s house was on fire? Yeah could be, but it seemed like a waste of time to pick up the phone… I did clean that new fire truck again.

Either way, Ravi made a good attempt at listing things that are a waste of time but it’s just not that simple as we all wish it would be.