I just got word from Tim Courtney the next Silicon Prairie Social will be held on Thursday, July 10, 2008 at Mullen’s Bar and Grill in Lisle, IL.

This is the next in what has turned out to be a successful series of quality tech networking event for the western suburbs of Chicago. The event is free, though you must register, and registration is now open. Check out the Web site for full details.

For those in the tech community in the burbs, it is a must attend, and as well for those of us in the city - as we are all part of the greater Chicagoland tech community.

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MyWay.com, or MyWay for short, is a Web-based personal portal. It was launched several years ago and later became part of Barry Diller’s Internet empire. When it was launched, it competed head-to-head with MyYahoo! The idea was MyWay would not serve pop-up advertising as MyYahoo! was starting to do. This attracted me to the service and I have used it as my home page since, even though its feature set has remained stagnant.

That set of features took a hit this week with the shutdown of its stock portfolio feature. I found out about this the hard way – I simply noticed it was gone. In its place was a Flash widget-like box, as shown below:

I looked around my MyWay page and clicked the “my portfolio” link at the top of the page. There was my list of stock tickers, with this message:

(its text - We are sorry. As of June 1st, My Way will no longer be supporting the Portfolio feature. We apologize for the inconvenience. Click here for more information about the new My Way Money page. - The My Way Team)

After clicking on the message (there was not a visible link) I got this message:

(its text - My Way is pleased to announce that we will be collaborating with Scottrade, one of the leading online brokerage firms and market research providers, on our new Money channel. Many of the features on the My Way Money page will now redirect to charts, graphs and information provided by Scottrade. As of June 1st, however, we will no longer be able to support the Portfolio feature. We are confident that our new and exciting partnership with Scottrade will provide you with convenient access to some of the most accurate, detailed and useful financial tools available on the Web. - The My Way Team)

Not knowing what to do, I tried to enter stock ticker but nothing showed up. Instead, ironically, pop-up windows with pages from Scottrade’s Web site appeared after a few minutes. One was of its home page, the other a page to look up tickers, which did not work. I was using Firefox 2 and did not try it in another browser.

That was yesterday, and today, the Flash widget is gone, and in its place is this message:

(its text - Sorry – We're experiencing technical difficulties with Scottrade Stock Watchlist. We are currently looking into it. Please check back soon.)

It’s one thing if MyWay decided to partner with Scottrade, but do it right! Inform people of the change, don’t just remove it and hope people will find a link to it (I never use any other portfolio features of MyWay). As Scottrade is guided by all kinds of SEC regulations, do I have to open a Scottrade account now? And what about a migration of my tickers, or do I have to re-enter them? I only have a few so it would not take too long, but I need to know either way.

Perhaps its time to move on and find a replacement service – maybe iGoogle or even look at MyYahoo! again. MyWay surely isn’t doing it the way I would. And how about the irony of my fortune, displayed below the widget?

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A colleague of mine is hoping to take an ASP.NET class in Chicago from June 3 to 6, 2008. The class only needs 2 people to take place, and so far he is the only person enrolled. As he is coming into the Windy City to take this class, he asked me to promote this in hopes of finding someone to take the class.

If this is something of interest to you, please contact me by posting a comment here at The Hot Iron and I will contact you off the blog. If this is not something of interest, please pass along if you know someone who may be interested in the training.

Thanks in advance, and I hope the power of the blogs can support my colleague!

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Imagine having a product you sell that people want, yet you create one they don’t, then decide to pull the one they want from the market? If you need an example of this, you need not look beyond Microsoft and its promotion of Windows Vista and pending threat to remove Windows XP from the shelf.

To many, Windows XP is all they need for their PC’s operating system. Finally, after years of enduring with issues with various Windows versions, a stable and reliable version exists in XP. Well, as stable and reliable as Windows can be, I guess. But this hasn’t held back the people in Redmond, Washington from selling Vista, an unstable and bloated operating system that has more incompatibilities that Democrats and Republicans. As a result, people have denounced it and have refused to upgrade to Vista. Since some of these people are the key technology decision-makers in Corporate America, traction is gaining in extending the life and support for XP.

InfoWorld Magazine is running a petition to save Windows XP. I have signed it myself, and if you are a fan of XP, I recommend you signing it as well. Whether or not it will make a difference, it is a way to show the size of the resistance.

Sign the Save Windows XP petition!

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Have you ever had a problem with a Web site? Notice how I did not ask for a show of hands, otherwise there would be a lot of arms in the air right now. When you encountered this error, what did you do? Did you call the company, or try to contact them via email or the contact form on their Web site?

As someone who spends most all of my days on the Web, I encounter many. If I do find an error or something out of the ordinary, sometimes I report it. I say sometimes as when I do, I am often confronted with the sounds of crickets on the other end of the phone, get an automated, generic response or something that contains words but is not necessarily a sentence.

Why is this? There are many contributing factors to this, including the typical siloing of functions within a company, the fact that who answer the phone or check the email from the Web site has no knowledge or way to process such a contact, and the Web site being accessed may be managed by a third-party or other entity outside the company and there are no lines of communication in place. Where these are all realistic scenarios, they do absolutely nothing to serve those actually use the Web site, otherwise known as paying customers.

As an Internet consultant and Web developer, I work closely with my clients and sometimes directly to their customers to resolve any issues with a Web site solution I have provided them. When I do get such a report, I check to ensure the following 4 questions are addressed:

• Who are they – their computer, operating system, browser, Internet connection speed and any programs that may be running while they are accessing the Web site
• What are they doing – the Web site they were accessing, including any and all links and where they linked from, and how they got to this point
• What happened – as much detail as possible, including a written or verbal description and screenshots
• What did they expect to happen – this is always helpful as it could be a case of mistaken expectations, or it could be they knew what was supposed to happen and it didn’t work that way

Generally people are willing to provide this information, especially if they are treated with courtesy and respect. Armed with this knowledge, a troubleshooting path can be put together rather quickly and hopefully a resolution is close at hand. That is, if you take the time to do your best to support the Web site user.

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