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I’m not sure what to think of this, but this is a strange one. I was on facebook late last night after talking with a friend in Korea (time difference). After the call, it was about 2.40am. I was at the FB homepage and to my left an ad was being displayed like the other typical ads out there. In the add was a $10 Canadian Bill and inside the bill was a naked woman. You definitely cannot miss it with those big jugs and hard rock nipples. I was like WTF, is FB running porn ads late at night or something? Not sure what to think, but it was quite interesting.

I took a screen capture of the ad, as you can see to the left. Let me know if anyone out there got a glimpse of this on FB of if there are actually more out there from where this came from.

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As usual, I start out all my FB related posts by saying - I love facebook and all, but there are some things I wish they would fix.

Before going into detail, one thing I wanted to point out was to FB to please resolve the issue a friend of mine is currently having. She can’t seem to login to Facebook and she swears that she did not change her password. Somehow, her account is inaccessible, and I do feel for her….the thoughts and paranoia keep you on the edge. I told her to try the “forgot password” option, which she did. But the trigger email cannot be sent to her inbox since it is now an inactive email. I told her to send emails to login@facebook.com which she has also done. It’s been 2 days now and still no resolution. People, please get on this. FB has helped me before on a previous post, and they were quite swift, so I know they can do this.

Anyway, before I digress, the issue my friend is currently having is related to one thing I noticed about FB. Anyone out there please correct me if I’m wrong, but I do not think FB has any Customer Service Line phone number on their site. I think this is quite strange, I checked all over the place. In fact, to add to the irony, I was just at the Facebook Camp Toronto meeting today at MaRS. During the Q&A segment, some guy actually asked a question saying he had some inquiry and looked all over FB for a phone number to call regarding his matter. He said he looked all over the website and found not a single contact number for anyone (echoing my sentiment as well). Funny enough, the Facebook rep (I forget his name now) was like “I’m sure there is definitely a number there, isn’t that like required by law anyway”. He seemed to be sure they should have a number on the site, but checking again tonite….I do not see any sort of contact number.

In the case such as these where users are having serious login issues, they should have a technical assistance line to resolve them within hours, instead of someone having to wait days. It could do a lot to your mental state people!!

My friend’s original message to support:

Please help!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can’t get in my facebook account…and I never changed my password! I can’t get the reset password email on my registered email ******* (inactive mailbox). Please send it here.

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So M$ offering a mix of Cash+Stock transaction to purchase Y! seems to be the hot topic all over the web right now. Let’s just say that is a lot of green. I know a lot of people have been commenting that this is a good thing; a good thing for Yahoo shareholders perhaps, but not for anyone else.. The funny comments are those who actually thing this is good for competition. I simply don’t see how having 1 less powerhouse competition can be good for the market. Here is my take on this.

Based on MS track record, they stick to their own services, offerings, standards etc. Microsoft is such a big closed wall virtually all the time and tries to make everyone else follow their own standard. If this goes through, I’m not even sure what the future holds for all companies, the web, innovation, standards etc.

The way I see it though, these are not some small startup companies we see here, these are 2 powerhouses in the tech world. If this deal goes through, it would take an awful lot of work and an awful long time to work out synergy amongst them. During this time, Google will keep innovating and out pacing them. I don’t think this buy would help MS, but I could be wrong. Both companies seem to have such different cultures, this should be an interesting play to watch. Heck, if Google wins the bid for the coveted C-Block Wireless Spectrum, this is a whole new ball game to watch for in the coming years.

Here is my prediction or what I would like to see happen:

• Apple and Google work even closer and tighter, in the race to fight big Microsoft.
• Adobe enters MS Office Suite territory - releases competing products for MS Office. (Remember they have Buzzword, and they developed the AIR runtime)
• Apple OS and maybe Linux begin to gain more ground. Seriously Vista is quite disappointing in some of the things they have changed.
• New startups also entering all the different spaces. Perhaps someone to release a new OS to compete, maybe an OS designed for the new web world. This might sound far fetched, but it’s something I’d like to see.
• Speaking of far fetched, I release my eBay Killer web service, Google buys me out and I use my money funding projects I would like to see.

It is only Feb 1, 2008, but this year also has a lot coming.

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Garmin seems to be entering the mobile phone business. I must say, I am a huge fan of Garmin’s GPS units, I have the Nuvi 660. Now a Garmin Phone……I have to say I love the look. Not just a phone, but with the functionality of the usual Garmin GPS and elegant UI. This is probably the closest competitor to the iPhone I think (not that I like the iPhone anyway). Also, seems like they are going all out for the specs on this phone, can'’t wait till it comes out in Q3 of this year.

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Everytime I try to launch Oracle Apps on my new laptop running Vista, my browser just hangs and then crashes. I could not figure out what the problem was and there was no way I would downgrade back to XP. As usual, I did some googling to find others who might have the same issue and possibly a solution. Lo and behold I did, right in the Oracle Forum actually.

So here are the steps to get Oracle Apps running on your Vista PC:

1. Install the latest Java Runtime Environment, which was Java 6 Update 3 when i did this: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp
2. After the JRE installation, go to the directory: C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0_02\bin\client
3. Copy this file: jvm.dll to the directory “C:\Program Files\Oracle\Jinitiator\bin\hotspot”, where is your version of JInitiator.
4. Remember to always backup before performing the above steps.

Now you should have Apps properly running on Vista

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