Our clients utilize PCAnywhere for their support issues. I’m running Vista - so when I tried to load our licensed client, I was swiftly met with an incompatibility message and the installer quit.

In visiting the Symantec site, they of course fixed the compatibility issue with an upgrade to version 12.1. The snag? You have to pay $100 for the upgrade. I have to have it, so I paid the $100. Paying $100 for an application to simply work after you paid the initial licensing before is really enough to make you angry.

Now that I have 12.1 loaded up, I’m having tons of problems with it. The app appears to be running if I look in Task Manager, but the window is nowhere to be found. And if I do get the window up, it’s totally blank. I started researching the issue in the Symantec forums. One note I found was a great article on the Symantec Autofix program.

What kind of software company writes a program that fixes issues that affect their original program? I guess Symantec would be that company.

Hey Symantec: If you know what the problem is and how to fix it, put the fix in your original application!!!

After installing the Autofix program, PCAnywhere still continues to have issues. I cringe when I have to use any Symantec program… I’ve been writing about them for too long.

• Student ‘Twitters’ his way out of Egyptian jail - CNN.com
  James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone.
  (tags: twitter jail)

• TweetWheel - Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other!
  Very cool little application that finds relationships between your first 100 Twitter friends.
  (tags: twitter app applications google appengine)
• Promotions Could Overtake Display and Search Says Report - ClickZ
  Display and search advertising are losing ground to spending on online promotions and sponsorships, according to a new report.
  (tags: advertising online display marketing trends promotions sponsorships)
• Mamma Mia! Papa John’s raking in the dough online - CNN.com
  Papa John’s reaches $1 bllion milestone in online pizza sales
  (tags: papajohns foodservice onlineordering)

Your emails look like this:

1. Perhaps a subject line more compelling and personalized instead of “ChangeThis: Issue 46″
2. Perhaps some line breaks so that I don’t have to wrap as I read (I didn’t read it, it was impossible).
3. Perhaps Multi-part MIME emails to send text to those who want a plain look, but HTML to those of us who enjoy a well-designed email.
4. Perhaps a compelling introduction?
5. Perhaps some white space between topics to make it easy to scan?
6. Perhaps headings to highlight the different topics and differentiate them from the descriptions?
7. Perhaps a bulleted list with the links and information associated with each?
8. Perhaps a list of common links back to the web site?
9. Perhaps a different Email Service Provider if yours is difficult to use?

The terrible part here is that ChangeThis‘ byline is:

ChangeThis is creating a new kind of media. A form of media that uses existing tools (like PDFs, blogs and the web) to challenge the way ideas are created and spread.

It’s a great organization with a vast amount of material to motivate change in leaders and entrepreneurs. It’s simply too bad that they choose to ignore the single communication method that keeps me coming back to their website.

I unsubscribed.

5/8/2008: Even though I subscribed, I received this email today. Not sure what might have happened but it was a vast improvement: