vtiger CRM 5.0.3 release announced for April

vtiger CRM - photo montage using iStockphoto file no. 2093341vtiger announced today that the newest version of its popular open source CRM software is going to be released at the beginning of April.

I had installed their software some months ago and found it to be very powerful and promising, but still a bit too buggy for my taste. I’ll certainly have a look at the new “solid and bug-less” 😉 release and post a review.

JAJAH can’t make calls to Taiwan anymore

Taipei 101 on a rainy dayI have to admit it has been a while since I last used JAJAH. As I’m sitting in front of the PC most of the day, Skype is just a tiny bit more convenient. Still, I was disappointed to find out that it’s currently not possible to make calls to Taiwan with JAJAH.

Here’s what their support had to say: “[…] The service to [Taiwan] is temporarily unavailable due to regulation issues. Please note that we cannot provide specific dates for when certain destinations will be available. […]”

🙁

The danger of being paid for links

Risky BusinessWith “monetize your blog / site” ads popping up all over the blogosphere, I’d just like to quickly point out that there might be side effects other than those usually associated with suddenly becoming rich. Consider what allegedly happend to MangoSauce (possibly NSFW): “Mango Sauce was penalised because I sold links through www.text-link-ads.com. A vengeful Google docked my “reputation” score thereby cutting referrals to the site by 75%.”

Now only Google knows if this is what actually happend, indeed there could be many reasons for being demoted on the search engine’s result pages, thereby receiving less traffic. However, while it seems to be unclear if selling links can actually damage your site’s ranking, Google’s disapproval of link selling has been very clear.

Note that I’m not saying “don’t do it” and I won’t even touch the ethical aspects of paid links. All I’m saying is “if you’re thinking about selling links, think twice, because there’s a chance your site’s ranking might suffer”.

Das Jahr des Schweins

Am 18.02.2007 beginnt im chinesischen Kulturkreis das Jahr des (goldenen) Schweins (金豬年). Das fiel mir gerade ein, als ich auf Spiegel Online gelesen habe, dass Media-Märkte per Abmahnung gegen ein Blog mit Parodien der Schweine-Werbung vorgehen. Wobei es viel einfacher sein dürfte, einem Deutschen das chinesische Jahr des Schweins zu erklären als einem Chinesen das (weltweit wohl einmalige) saublöde deutsche Abmahnwesen.

Sam & Max everywhere

I’ve recently read a lot about the new Sam & Max episodes (golem.de [1] [2] [3], in German), which reminded me of a post I made more than a year and a half ago in my (completely outdated, therfore no link ;)) private blog: If you still have the data files of “certain classic graphical point-and-click adventure games” like the original Sam & Max, you can use ScummVM to play them on a large variety on systems. I used it to run Sam & Max on my Pocket PC, which was just collecting dust (who needs a PDA which forgets everything every time the battery’s empty?). The screen resolution was a perfect match and from a technical point of view, everything worked very well. So, if you want to get in the mood for the new episodes, you might want to have a look at ScummVM (provided that you still have the original files on a CD or… what was that other thing called… punchcard? No… floppy disk, that’s it).

On a more personal note, playing this game reminded me that I like the humour in Sam & Max, but I just don’t like point and click adventures. Seriously, they make me feel constrained, like spending hours squeezed in an economy class seat on a long haul flight (yes, I’m looking forward to my trip to Taiwan).