The headline news in Dubai right now is the rain and all the chaos that it is causing on the roads due to severe flooding. I too have my own rain story to tell but I will leave that for tomorrow as today I have another matter that I would like to blog about as it is making my blood boil. Grrr!

(But let me first leave you with this post in Life in Dubai which I think nicely describes the chaos that is being caused by the rain and Sandier Pastures has some nice photos on her post as well).

So, on to why I’m p*ssed off today.

I’m not entirely sure why this got under my skin. Maybe it’s because lately I’ve been surrounded by so much incompetence, so much no-can-do attitude, so much inefficiency, so much “No madam,” “No madam,” “That cannot be done madam,” “No madam,” and so much nonchalant-ness in Dubai that this one thing just sent me over the edge. Most days, I just shrug my shoulders and get on with life. No sense losing one’s cool over minor stuff when there’s world hunger to tackle, right. Anyway, everyone’s allowed to have their bad days and p*ssed off days. Well, this is mine.

Here’s the story. Yesterday I subscribed to FeedBurner because I wanted a way to track subscriptions to my blog via RSS feeds. The tracking service provided by FeedBurner sounded great and since the company had been bought by Google in July of 2007 I figured it would have a nicely integrated set-up process with Blogger (which is what I’m using) which is also owned by Google.

Well, there IS a simple process but the catch is that you have to either (1) have your website be on a Blogger blogspot account (ie. www.blogspot.sdangit.com) or (2) have www.sdangit.com be a registered domain with Blogger.

I fall under a different category which is that I use Blogger only for the blog program but then I upload all the files to my own domain that is in no way affiliated with Blogger/Google/FeedBurner. As the FeedBurner quickstart manual did not mention what a person in my position can do to take advantage of their service, I did the natural thing – I Googled as well as searched both FeedBurner and Blogger forums. When I sensed that there was no integrated solution, I posted this on their forums.

In essence, their response was “Configure it yourself.”

HELLOOO!!!!

First of all, I had posted under “Upgrades, Wishlists, Enhancements” and not under “Help Me Please.” So I was not asking “What can I do” nor “How can I do this” but rather “This service does not exist, can it be added?”

When I was working at SAP and the CRM users submitted requests for enhancements or upgrades, never once did I hear my team say, “No, this cannot be done.” And leave it at that. Even if it was a far-out request, it was added to the list, prioritized, and then Steve or Brian would meet with the field and update them on where things stood or what the work-around was (well, there was more to it than that but I know you don’t have all day do you?).

I guess what I am trying to say is that it would have been nice if the reply from FeedBurner came as something more like this:

“Thank you for your submission to our wishlist. While there is currently no simple solution to your issue, we recognize that many users have brought this matter up and will add it to our list for review. Please be aware that not all requests can be realized but we value your input as both a Blogger and FeedBurner user. In the meantime, please find instructions on how to configure the redirect on your own here or here.”

Yes, I will configure it myself. But silly me, what was I thinking to suggest something that would make FeedBurner more universally accessible and useful.

Okay, rant over. Now I am going to open up a bottle of wine and forget this whole thing.

This entry was posted on January 15, 2008 at 4:05 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Uncategorized by sd-b 1 Comment