Paypal and Wolfram Alpha
December 23rd 2009 09:16
Since I last wrote here, I've collected a variety of items relating to the Web and its joys and woes.
First up is a horror story about poor service at PayPal. Now I don't have any beefs with PayPal. For me it's always worked well, and I hope that it will continue to do so. But some people haven't been so lucky. It doesn't appear as though it's been their fault in the slightest; they've just tried to do something that PayPal's Big Brother team hasn't liked and things have fallen apart rapidly.
This wouldn't be so bad if you could get someone at PayPal to respond as a customer servant - you know, related to customer service. But this is where PayPal has fallen down badly. Customer service doesn't seem to be their high priority. Not at least as far as those in the story are concerned. We all hate call center services a lot of the time, but we hate them even more when they're obtuse, obstructive and downright bullies.
On a more pleasant note comes an update from that most peculiarly-named search site, Wolfram Alpha. In an end of the year update on their blog you'll find an extraordinary list of things that have been upgraded on their site, or added to, or improved or whatever.
My first impression of this search engine back in May, was that if didn't serve any great purpose that wasn't already served by Google - and I wasn't alone. However, they're obviously setting out - if this blog post is anything to go by - to prove that they're aiming to do something Google doesn't do well at this point.
Whether you want the information they're making available is another question - of course, you could ask the same thing about 99.99999% of the information on Google. But WA is making available lists (the FBI stats on crime for 20 years or details of winners, also-rans and a host more in the Olympics since they began) or data about things we'd like to understand better, such as the complexity of the solar system or details of how your teeth grow.
It's possible such information could be found on Google, but it may take a number of searches (and with a modem that keeps flicking off just when you're in the middle of something, that can be frustrating). AW is aiming to bring information together and then make it more easily found. And it seems to be achieving this.
The photo is of Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the machine.
First up is a horror story about poor service at PayPal. Now I don't have any beefs with PayPal. For me it's always worked well, and I hope that it will continue to do so. But some people haven't been so lucky. It doesn't appear as though it's been their fault in the slightest; they've just tried to do something that PayPal's Big Brother team hasn't liked and things have fallen apart rapidly.
This wouldn't be so bad if you could get someone at PayPal to respond as a customer servant - you know, related to customer service. But this is where PayPal has fallen down badly. Customer service doesn't seem to be their high priority. Not at least as far as those in the story are concerned. We all hate call center services a lot of the time, but we hate them even more when they're obtuse, obstructive and downright bullies.
On a more pleasant note comes an update from that most peculiarly-named search site, Wolfram Alpha. In an end of the year update on their blog you'll find an extraordinary list of things that have been upgraded on their site, or added to, or improved or whatever.
My first impression of this search engine back in May, was that if didn't serve any great purpose that wasn't already served by Google - and I wasn't alone. However, they're obviously setting out - if this blog post is anything to go by - to prove that they're aiming to do something Google doesn't do well at this point.
Whether you want the information they're making available is another question - of course, you could ask the same thing about 99.99999% of the information on Google. But WA is making available lists (the FBI stats on crime for 20 years or details of winners, also-rans and a host more in the Olympics since they began) or data about things we'd like to understand better, such as the complexity of the solar system or details of how your teeth grow.
It's possible such information could be found on Google, but it may take a number of searches (and with a modem that keeps flicking off just when you're in the middle of something, that can be frustrating). AW is aiming to bring information together and then make it more easily found. And it seems to be achieving this.
The photo is of Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the machine.
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