The Fishnet Radio Episode 7: A Grown-Up’s Guide to MySpace January 30, 2007
Posted by Kathy in Internet, Internet Radio (Podcast).add a comment
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware that MySpace is immensely popular. But do you know why, or even what it does? In this episode geared toward parents, Kathy shares what she’s gleaned about MySpace as a MySpace neophyte herself.
Sending an error report to Microsoft actually does something January 21, 2007
Posted by Kathy in Software.add a comment
As any computer user knows, occasionally a software program will simply crash. When this happens in Windows XP, you see an apologetic dialog box that offers you the opportunity to report the error to Microsoft. If you choose to report the error, Microsoft uses the information to monitor and fix problems with its software.
Even though I have always understood the purpose of this function, I still couldn’t help the feeling that sending these error reports is of little use, since I know there’s no technician on the other end calling important people and re-programming frantically in order to fix my particular problem. Yet I was surprised one day to find that Microsoft did take action in response to my error report, and took it immediately.
One day I was using a software application (which one, I can’t remember) which crashed and burned. I received the familiar prompt asking me whether I wanted to notify Microsoft of the error. Perhaps feeling optimistic that day, I said yes. Within moments I noticed some additional activity on my computer. A web browser window soon opened up which contained a page from Microsoft’s support knowledgebase suggesting a possible solution to the error I’d just experienced. Unfortunately it turns out that the proposed solution involved software I didn’t even have, so it didn’t remotely apply to me.
Still, I had never seen this happen before, and so I never knew that Windows could automatically retrieve a knowledgebase article relevant to a software error. Even though it didn’t help in my particular case, I found this to be a helpful feature. In the future I may be more inclined to send those errors to Microsoft when they occur.
