Before signing up with eFax, do yourself a favor and read the reviews on websites like epions.com, yelp.com or viewpoints.com.

From my own experience I can confirm that it is difficult to cancel your account with eFax. You also have to be careful if they offer you a more reasonable rate: In my case this rate reverted back to the original rate after 4 months. The customer service representative admitted that “he didn’t know about this” and offered to reactivate the cheaper rate for another four months. At this point I asked him to cancel my account instead, which he pretended to do after asking for my PIN. Unfortunately, eFax kept charging me and when I complained by email, I was told that my account had never been cancelled and that I had to call them again (which I just did). This time I had a witness listening to the conversation and wrote down the name of the person I talked to (she essentially refused to give me her last name, claiming there was only one person with her first name working there). If they still keep billing me I’ll simply ask my bank to do a chargeback.

I’d also like to point out that eFax sends you every received fax by email (as an attachment, in addition to letting you download it through the message center). While this is certainly convenient, it may be a serious security risk if a fax contain sensitive data. Unencrypted emails are about as secure as a postcard. Some people prefer to send a fax precisely because they do not want to send an (unencrypted) email. Having eFax transform faxes into an emails is not a good practice.

eFax alternatives

There are a lot of companies offering similar (or even better) services for fax sending and receiving. I eventually signed up with PamFax not only because they were cheaper, but mostly because they make it very easy to cancel your account. They also never send the actual fax by email, you only get a notification and then download the fax over a secure connection (SSL). PamFax allows you to integrate your account with Skype, Facebook, Salesforce, Box.net, Dropbox and Google Docs (to varying extents) and their modern website makes eFax look really dated.

Finding reviews for Pamfax was a bit difficult. There are a few confusing reviews in the Skype apps shop. As the service is run by a German company, you can also find some user reviews in German on heise.de (currently 8 reviews with an average of 4 stars out of 6).

Personally, I’m very satisfied with PamFax so far.

Another online fax service I found was PopFax. If you know any other eFax alternatives, please leave a comment.

Here’s another option: If you own a Fritz!Box, that might be all you need to receive and send faxes. However, I found that the integrated Fritz!Box fax was clearly less reliable than an actual fax machine.

Despite the talk about “better protection of consumer rights”, I believe that the central problem this directive is meant to fix is the following:

The cross-border potential of distance selling, which should be one of the main tangible
results of the internal market, is not fully exploited.

Not fully exploited? You could blame the fact that the common market does not have a common language or that cross-border shipping costs are frequently ridiculously high, but a lot of the blame most certainly goes to the EU and the member states for having introduced diverging national versions of previous directives relating to “distance selling”.

Just to mention two obvious issues, a trader who wanted to sell to all EU member states had to deal with a period for the right of withdrawal which could be anywhere from 7 days to 15 days and with different regulations concerning the reimbursement of return shipping costs. Some countries went completely over the top: Germany introduced not just a right of withdrawal, but also an alternate “right of return” (which of course was almost the same thing, but not quite) and a unique exemption for the reimbursement of return shipping costs of orders under 40€ (only valid under certain circumstances) – and that’s just scratching the surface of this mess.

Therefore, as someone who works for small company which sells across borders every day and also as a consumer who often has to deal with merchants who – understandably – say “no thanks” and refuse to sell to countries other than their own, I do welcome this new harmonised directive. However, I’m a bit appalled that the member states are being given two further years to “incorporate the new rules into their domestic legislation”.

This lack of urgency to actually make the internal market work is – in my humble opinion – at the root of many of the EU’s current severe problems.

Things you should know before buying Seagate’s BlackArmor NAS 220

a) It is dreadfully slow. Seagate itself wrote that the “NAS should be running around 9-10 MB/s” in their response to a customer on Newegg. This is much slower than a USB 2.0 external HDD (around 30MByte/s). A (certainly more expensive) modern NAS meant for SOHO use like the Qnap TS-219P+ can achieve write speeds of around 60MByte/s while a business NAS like the Qnap TS-239 Pro II+ will be able to reach close to 100MByte/s*.

With just 28% data volume usage on a 4TB BlackArmor NAS 220 in Raid 1 configuration, my NAS to NAS backup took somewhere between 17 and 21 hours!

b) Making matters significantly worse is the fact that Seagate’s BlackArmor NAS 220 is unable to do incremental NAS to NAS backups. This means the device will have to copy all of the files again instead of copying only those which have been modified since the last backup.

My intention was to have daily NAS to NAS backups done automatically during the night. As the data volume increases, this will become impossible with this NAS because it won’t have finished the previous day’s backup by the time the next one is scheduled to start. I would not promote a device like this as a “small-business specific network-attached storage solution”**.

This doesn’t mean it’s completely useless, though. You could still do daily NAS to NAS backups of a few important files while backing up the entire device only during long weekends or extended holidays.

Set up NAS to NAS backups on Seagate’s BlackArmor NAS 220

The user guide does a poor job of explaining the process, which is why I’ve written it down here:

1. Got to the target device (where you want your backups to be saved) and select STORAGE > Backup Manager.

2. Under Backup Server, select Server Setting.

3. Check the Backup Service box. The following form should appear:

4. Enter an Auth name and Auth pass. You’ll need these later when starting the backup from the source NAS.

5. You’ll have to set up an Alias name. Enter a name and click on Add new alias.

Wondering what this is and why you need it? The manual won’t help you here. As far as I understand it, the “alias name” will be used as the name of the backup subfolder in the backup share on the target device. For the example pictured below, I had set up 3 aliases (“aycaramba”, “Backup” and “gugu”). You can probably use aliases to back up your files to different subfolders on different days of the week, enabling you to keep several versions of a file (and many totally identical files because this NAS can’t tell the difference).

Please note that you won’t be able to access this folder structure immediately (see “Access your backup” below).

6. Click on Submit at the very bottom of the form.

7. Go to the source NAS and select STORAGE > Backup Manager.

8. Under Backup Manager, click on NAS to NAS if you want to do a (one time) backup immediately or click on Schedule Backup to schedule a backup in the future. I’ll go with the second option.

9. In the Schedule Backup form, select Network Backup. Don’t ask me why it’s called “NAS to NAS” in the menu on the left and “Network Backup” here.

10. Choose the backup server by entering the IP address of the target NAS manually or by clicking on Detect IP Adress and selecting a server from the list. Enter all required fields for the backup server. Don’t panic if the alias doesn’t show up in the drop-down-list, you can just enter it in the text field:

11. Test the connection. If you get an error, make sure you’ve entered Auth name, Auth pass and Alias name as specified above on the target NAS. If it still doesn’t work, go back to the target NAS and make sure the Backup Service is activated (step 3).

12. Enter a Backup Description, select Frequency and Time and click on Schedule.

You’re done. You can select Task Monitor under Backup Manager to see if a backup is running (which will also give you widely varying estimates of the remaining time).

Access your backup

Eventually, you might want to access the backed up files on the target NAS. This shouldn’t be a problem since Seagate says this device can do “Network NAS to NAS replication”.

You’ve guessed it, of course it’s a problem and “replication” might not be the most appropriate term here. On the target NAS, you’ll have to go back to STORAGE > Backup Manager > Server Setting, uncheck the box next to Backup Server and check the one next to Add Backup Shares to CIFS Share, then click on Submit. BTW, this is not mentioned in the user guide at all.

You’ll now be able to access a network share called backupSpace1 using the admin credentials (not the Auth name and Auth pass for the backup server). This share contains the aliases which contain the backed up folders. Make sure you don’t forget to reactivate the Backup Server option after you’re done or else the next scheduled backup will fail.

Now please excuse me while I try to revive my antique PowerPC-based Buffalo TeraStation, which I believe is faster than my shiny new Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220.

Firmware: version 2000.1211
User guide: version 2

** The complete sentence – which I should have read more carefully -  is: “The BlackArmor NAS 220 server is a small business-specific network-attached storage solution designed to provide centralised storage and data backup, helping to deliver business continuity for up to 20 PC.” You might like it a lot more than I did if you’re only interested in doing incremental backups from a PC to the NAS (you’ll probably still notice that it’s very slow).

This message appears when you’re using a secure connection (https://) and the website is trying to load non-secure (http://) elements, too. The culprit was easy enough to find (using HttpWatch or similar tools):

What made this case unusual is that it wasn’t a server-side problem. Instead, the DivX HiQ plugin + Web Player Beta installed on the client’s machine was causing the issue on every single secure page. The warnings disappeared after uninstalling DivX HiQ (disabling the plugin should work, too):

So, if Internet Explorer is suddenly giving you these warnings, check if you’ve recently installed DivX.

Notre situation ne semble pas être unique: il y a plusieurs posts de marchands inquiets sur les divers forums d’aide de Google. Sans forum spécifique pour Google Merchant Center, les réponses des collaborateurs de Google ne sont pas très utiles, mais un des marchands a publié le 04.01.2011 une réponse reçue par e-mail:

Le lancement de Google Shopping a rencontré un grand succès. Les ouvertures de compte ont été nombreuses, ce qui a rallongé les délais d’évaluation de chaque flux. […] Votre flux sera évalué dans les prochaines semaines.

C’est donc l’évaluation manuelle et le success de Google Merchant Center qui ont causé les délais. Il serait une bonne idée pour Google de publier cette information de forme plus visible pour éviter d’être inondé avec des messages de marchands préoccupés par le délai.

All of these are from today

As you can see, most of my visitors where looking for , which is a pet supply franchise chain. That’s because I blogged about how badly ‘s Luxembourgish website sucks. Not only is it configured in a way that omitting the “www.” will get you nowhere, even if you make it to their website it’s difficult to locate their biggest store unless you know where to find it on a map (or keep zooming out). This quickly became the most popular post on my blog (pathetic, I know) which means that I’m obviously not the only one who had trouble finding what I wanted on their site.

So here’s a quick reminder of the very basic content you should put on your website (examples are geared towards a brick and mortar store).

The 5 friggin’ Ws – things you should definitely put on your website

Let’s simply take the well-known 5 Ws from journalism and reinterpret them from the perspective of a website visitor looking for information (which should also get us pretty close to the perspective of a search engine trying to determine your website’s ranking). Apparently these basics are so obvious that they’re often forgotten (either that or many people just have no clue of what to put on a website).

Who?

Who are you? Example: We’re “Zombie Megastore”, Luxembourg’s leading store for all you zombie needs.

What?

What exactly is it that you do? Example: We carry a large selection of… well, maybe I shouldn’t have chosen the zombie store example. Anyhow, here’s where you list the things customers can find in your shop so that 1. they’ll find you when searching for your city + a certain item or brand on a search engine and 2. they don’t have to call and ask if you sell product XYZ item before taking the trip to your store.

When?

Opening hours. If you’re closed on certain days, put this on your website. If you’re closing your shop for vacation, put this on your website (yes, I’m looking at you, Luxembourgish shop and restaurant owners who like to take long summer vacations).

Where?

Your address (you might want to include your phone/fax number, email, link to contact form, etc.).

Why?

This is the place where you might think you’ll have to come up with a wonderful story to justify why you’re doing what you do (“when my grandfather turned into a zombie, I realized there was no shop where I could buy thinks to make his… uhm… ‘life’ just a bit better”). That’s cute, but I suggest staying with the customer perspective and just answering the old basic “why should I buy from you”-question. It can be as simple as “we are the biggest store for zombie supplies in the entire state”.

That’s it, the basics. Of course a website can do much more than just answering these questions, but not answering them means you’ll lose potential visitors/customers every day.

I discovered this when receiving my first Google Adsense check from Google’s bank in Germany. This sort of intra-EU payment might have been “cutting edge” a century ago. Nowadays it’s just odd and annoying, because I have to leave the office during the very restricted opening hours of my bank to cash the check, which costs me €15 in fees (or about a week of Adsense revenue). Someone at Google should look up Regulation (EC) No 2560/2001.

It’s not just Luxembourg, though, it appears Google doesn’t like smaller Eurozone countries and Greece (bad vacation experiences, maybe?):

Population data from Wikipedia

I wanted to add our logo to a brochure so that visitors of our scales and balances shop would have a way of telling from where they had downloaded the brochure. This particular brochure had backgrounds in several colors, which is why the logo itself needed to have a transparent background.

Unfortunately, Nitro PDF Professional does not recognize the transparent background in image files (tested with version 5.5.1.3). The watermark has to be a PDF file to have a transparent background.To make matters worse, the simple graphics editor I had used years ago to create the logo had no PDF export option.

Here’s the workaround I used:

1. Export the logo in an image format that supports transparency (I used PNG):

2. Open the image with OpenOffice Draw (open source, free download here):

3. Export as PDF:

4. In Nitro PDF, choose Insert and Edit > Watermark > Manage Watermarks & Backgrounds:

5. Create a new profile and add a PDF watermark:

6. Choose the PDF file created in step 3 and adjust the settings to place the watermark where you want it. Don’t forget to choose Open a web link under Action if you want the watermark to be clickable:

7. Apply the watermark to the document:

As you can see, it looks pretty good on a blue background, too.

Note: You can move individual watermarks around using the Edit tool, but the clickable area does not seem to move with them.

External links:

• Nitro PDF Professional
• OpenOffice Draw
• balances.lu (in French)

Some checkboxes you might consider turning off in your campaign settings:

• Automatic matching (not available in all countries)
• iPhone ads
• Search Partners

Search Partners? Why wouldn’t I want Google to show my ads on sites like Google product search, ask.com and aol? Well, because they’re showing on ebay, too, even though Google doesn’t mention this in Adwords help.

I asked Google last year and got this reply:

“Our global search network includes Google Product Search, Google Groups, and search sites such as AOL, Ask.com, ebay.com/ebay.de and shopping.com.”

An no, you can’t chose certain sites, it’s all or nothing.

In our case, “nothing” was the right choice. Ebay customers are not our target market and we actually stopped selling on Ebay years ago. Why would we want to display ads there?

Instead of throwing tons of money at Google Adwords, we restricted spending to a sensible level, redesigned our main online shop and invested some time into SEO. The result? December turnover increased by 50% in comparison to last year while costs for Adwords decreased by 57%.

No, Google did not steal our Christmas.

I’ll get back to this in another month. Click here to add your name to the adCenter Analytics invitation list and try it out yourself.

*Why didn’t I use Google Analytics like everyone else? Well, sometimes I’m a maverick, too.

Update March 2009: Since Microsoft decided to pull the plug on Analytics, I won’t be posting anything on this topic anymore. Their announcement and the comments contain links to lots of alternative web analytics solutions.