Wednesday, 18 March 2009

Gmail fixes "mark as unread" annoyance - you can now mark individual messages instead of the whole thread

Great to see that Google have fixed that issue where "Mark as unread"
marks *the whole thread* instead of just the specific message that you
wanted to mark as unread. I'm just surprised it took so long to get
it fixed.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/small-but-helpful-change-to-mark-as.html

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Jaxb notes: specifying a package for a classes generated from a schema

Use the <package> element of the <schemaBindings> binding declaration
to define the package name for the schema.

For example, the following defines the package name for all JAXB
classes generated from the simpleservice.xsd file:

<jaxb:bindings
xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
schemaLocation="simpleservice.xsd"
node="/xs:schema">
<jaxb:schemaBindings>
<jaxb:package name="examples.jaxb"/>
</jaxb:schemaBindings>
</jaxb:bindings>


Taken from http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs103/webserv/data_types.html#wp223112

Saturday, 7 March 2009

Getting a replacement power supply for Western Digital external drives - easy as pie

I very rarely get to actually praise a company for doing something beyond my expectations of service so here goes.

I've owned a 500GB WD Elements external hard drive for a little more than a year, and it stopped working about a month ago. I suspected the power supply was faulty, because I would plug it in, it would light up for half a second, then die out.

I was running out of disk space on my computer so I finally got around to looking for all the paperwork for it to make a warranty claim - the receipt, the warranty documents, etc. I went online, registered the product, adjusted the warranty dates by sending them a photo of my receipt, since there were a few weeks between the time of manufacture and the time of sale.

Then I rang Western Digital support and told them about my problem. The conversation went something like this:

Me: I've got a problem with the power supply of my external hard drive. It lights up for a moment after plugging in then goes out.

WD support: So what is the plug for your power supply. Is it 5-pin or something else?

Me: 5 pin. (I'd read on their support site that models made after sometime in 2008 used a different power supply and pin)

WD support: Okay, give me your name and address. You should get it in about two weeks.

Me: Do you need my registration number, or the model of hard drive I have.

WD: No, it doesn't matter what size of drive, it's just the plug that's different.

So they didn't even check if I actually had a registered drive. I could have been anyone or the item could have been out of warranty and would still have received a replacement power supply! Not that I'm complaining. Probably the chances of people doing that are quite unlikely anyway, so they decided to simplify the procedure.

The power supply arrived yesterday, Friday, 6 March. It was sent by FedEx from Singapore on 3 March. No questions, no rego check, no hassles. Just send it out when requested. WD support are f*king excellent!