Friends (i.e. amych), I am teaching a class next summer and the main project is building a research guide for Classical Studies in Wordpress. Can you recommend 1) good introductions and/or how-to guides for using Wordpress for novices? This is going to be on a hosted install. And 2) can you recommend exemplary sites for them to use as inspiration for the various ways one can structure a Wordpress site? I want them to think creatively about how they are presenting their information, and stimulate them to think beyond the (very boring) traditional structures of "library research guides". Thank you!

I joined facebook using a dummy email account (and not my real name) because a game I play on the ipad only does its customer support using FB and the game is janky, crashing and bad. They released an app update and that crashed really badly, they pulled the game from the store, said a more stable version would be release the week of March 4 and then no communication on the FB page.

The company said that they resubmitted the game and are waiting for approval. Here is my response:

I understand that you are appreciative that "a bunch of us have kept positive", but those of us who remain frustrated likely would have been less so if you had communicated better during the app update problems. I would have understood if there was a delay in getting the app updated. Just say so, let us know there will be an update in a few days. The long periods of silence and overall lack of customer support (I have never had a reply from support to my email messages) makes us think that the developers may abandon this game - which is something I have experienced before.

Consider all the negative consumer reaction EA received for the bad launch of SimCity. MyDinos isn't at the scale, of course, but if EA had disappeared for over a week after pulling the game from retail outlets, there would have been a notoriously bad backlash.

Good luck with the updates and I hope the game appears in the App Store soon and is much more stable than it is currently.

My question to all of you: The company "liked" my response. I do not use FB much. Why would you "like" a response for something that is critical of your practices?

I just had to share: I have spent a while updating everything I could think of because one of our wireless printers in the office had quit working. I reset and updated everything. Finally, I checked the cables - someone had plugged the USB cable into the ethernet slot. Not surprisingly, that was the problem.

The company didn't "like" your post. A certain employee of the company liked your post. That employee is probably as frustrated with her employer as you are, and you provided her a means to semi-anonymously express her feelings.

Scola,

got it. thanks.

Also, sometimes people "like" something merely as an acknowledgement to let you know that they read it and appreciate you took the time to express your concerns.

I got some resounding non-help (a cookie cutter email on an unrelated topic) from Zynga, and they sent a follow up asking how their support team had handled the ticket.

Man, writing that response was fun...

I like being vituperative without being profane. Good stretch.

Is anyone else getting a google malware notice on their Dreamwidth friends page? I'm not getting it on any of the other dreamwidth pages, just the reading one!

There's a whole lot of malware going on right now. I can't even get to Google Reader because one of the feeds has been infected.

GFY yourself has been having problems for a couple of weeks, too.