Just a quick note to everyone out there, that from the end of August 2008, Google is removing the adsense referrals part of there programme

So If any of you are using this, i.e referrals to Firefox, Google Pack etc, then Log into your account and create something else for the space.

I came across this great website wordle for generating word clouds. Not only is it fun to play around with during lunch, for designers it may be of use. I'm thinging about using it on a business card.

You can paste in a bunch of words or enter a url of a Atom or RSS feed

Wordle is a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

jOra is an Eclipse-Plugin for Oracle Developers and Oracle Admins. The plugin makes the work with Oracle easier and more efficient. It eases the daily use of the database.

jOra integrates seamless in the Eclipse Workbench and is therefore best suited for Coldfusion/Java developers using an Oracle database.

jOra is Freeware. It can be used for free in private and commercial projects.

You can find the plugin at: http://jora.luenasoft.de/index_en.html

It's the birthday month in my household so I decided that I'd get an iphone for a family member (plus the price had dropped ﾣ100 to ﾣ169.) So on the 19th April 2008, I logged onto o2's website and place an order for an 8gb iphone and this is where the fun started.

The website has since changed, but at the time of ordering I received an email confirming my registration with o2 and an email stating my order reference etc. The latter email also stated that I would receive updates as my order went through the system and that I could track the order online, by logging into my new o2 account.

Pah - There was no such link on their site and I got no emails for 3 days! So enough is enough I thought, I fired off an email from there online contact form and got a bulk standard email back saying a representative would be in contact shortly. Ummm I thought.... You guessed it, I got nothing!

So what to do. I googled the net for an email address of someone with clout at o2. I always find it's a waste of time phoning and companies support line. I hate talking to idiots who have no clout and give me the run around and judging by some of the comments about o2's customer service; I definitely saved myself some time and money.

Anyway, I found an email of a guy called David Nicholas who is the communications director at o2. I sent an email to him complaining about the delay and the bad customer service and poor website. 2 Hours later I actually got a reply from the guy. Basically he was very sorry for the problems I was having and he would pass on the problem to some department would contact me very soon, and if I hadn't, to contact him again so he could chase up. Well after another few hours I heard nothing, so I emailed him again. It wasn't too long before he came back to me saying that a guy called Richard Chew was looking into the problem and would contact me directly.

To cut a long story short, I got an email from this guy saying he was looking into it for me and he would phone me the next day (it was 6pm by this point). Sure enough he did phone me and explained that there had been a problem with the system on the 19th and he offered my ﾣ100 cheque as a gesture of good will and the phone would be with me Monday. Fantastic!

So now I'm on DHL's website refreshing the screen to see if it's been delivered or not. Since 9am this morning is showing a status of "Security check" wtf. Maybe they think it's a bomb or something? I'm getting annoyed now as I just know its either going to be yet another day late, or somehow its going to get lost at DHL (or blown up)!