Your complaints

I know, I know, I’ll get to it

I really need to get “Your Complaints” working again. We have a new complaint, incorrectly left as a comment on another post. For all of you who left complaints at the old site, they aren’t lost. I was working on getting that set up again at the new site, but then I got distracted. I’ll get to it, though.

Some things good, some things bad

Well, I can’t figure out the stupid redirect. I’m trying to redirect the old links (http://www.blog.complainthub.com/?p=XXX where XXX is a number) to the new links (http://www.complainthub.com/?q=?p=XXX). I think there are too many .htaccess redirects going on, and I don’t really understand it all. Otherwise, things are good. The friend who said the old layout “made his eyes bleed” has already expressed his approval. Since he picked the colors, he’d better approve. Next on the list is a different project, but then I’ll get back to reimplementing “Your Complaints” so you can complain about stuff, too.

AT&T wants to censor your complaints

AT&T Legal Policy Via Boing Boing, Gizmodo, and others.

So, AT&T has decided that they can terminate your service if your conduct ” tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.” I’m not exactly sure what “tends to damage” means, but it sounds ominous.

That being said, I do not use AT&T as a web host or ISP. If you have any grievances against AT&T, or its parents, affiliates, and subsidiaries, feel free to contact me. I will happily provide a soapbox for you to stand on and voice your complaints.

You can do it here, or, if you have something particularly poignant, well-written, and not slanderous or libelous, I would probably be willing to allow a guest post to the main site. Email Jon at complaint hub dot com. I will be your voice, because AT&T has no power over me, and I believe in every human being’s right to complain.

Featured Complaint of the Week

Complaint: Dumbass Major League Baseball

There is no reason to freaking block a game because it’s on ESPN. IDIOTS!

So, one of my more obnoxious friends has been badgering me to upgrade the Your Complaints section of Complaint Hub for a while. I haven’t done it because I’m lazy. He wants to be able to reply to complaints. I’ve told him to go to Ventbox, but he ignores me.

One of these days I’ll get around to it. Probably not this week. But one of these days.

A way to submit your own complaints thats better than mine

VentBox â„¢ » VentBox is comingâ€¦ real soon (beta invite)

My co-complainer over at VentBox is releasing a beta version of his complaint (vent) submission site. It’s way more web 2.0 than mine, and much more involved and well-done. Anyway, go get a beta invitation and check it out.

I should really do some work on the page where you can submit your own complaints. It’s terrible that the page still looks as badly as it does. It needs more interaction. It needs more CSS, maybe some more color. And innovation. It needs innovation.

Internet Explorer is the devil

I’ve been working on some Ajax hotness for you on the complaint submission form, and it looks pretty cool in Firefox. However, not long ago, Windows XP insisted that I upgrade to Internet Explorer 7, where they added some features that other browsers have had for years and moved everything you’ve always used to strange places so you can’t find anything.

So, the cool Ajax, courtesy of Scriptaculous, doesn’t work at all in IE7. I’m still working on it, though.

For any of you coming here using Internet Explorer, please do yourself and the rest of the world a favor and download a real browser. I prefer Firefox, but anything is better than IE.

Are you ready to complain?

I hope you are. When I first started this site, everyone immediately asked, “How can I complain?” And now, you can. The alpha release of the complaint submission form is available! This is very rough, and needs a lot of work, but if you submit a complaint, it will be displayed.

So, I’m looking for feedback. It needs some styling, I know. I’m not really good at building a pretty page. And eventually you’ll be able to add your own tags instead of picking from a limited number of categories (Something like del.icio.us or Flickr or whatever).

Don’t worry – your email address is not visible to anyone but me, and I’ll never contact you (Unless you’re already a friend, as most of you submitters will be) and I will NEVER sell your email address.

For those who are curious, the submission form is written in Ruby on Rails, which is a pretty cool new-ish web programming language. So far, it’s a joy to program in. And I barely know what I’m doing, so it should be even better when I know a bit more.