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Books my Kids Love

This is partly to get me familiar with blogging again, partly to post something non-techie. Here's a quick selection of kids' books that have gone down well in our household:

• Dear Zoo


• The Great Pet Sale


• Alexander's Outing


• The Paperbag Princess


• The Gruffalo


• The Gruffalo's Child


• Belvadere is Beached


• Shh


• Someone Bigger


• Harry and the Bucketfull of Dinosaurs


• Bringing Down the Moon

More, plus links etc. once I get round to it.

Links That Don't

Why can't they check that their links work before sending them out?

Is it me, or are people getting more and more lazy about checking whether the links that they publish (web, email or phone) actually work? Three examples:

A major national organisation that we have contact with at work has a web site about various projects that it is involved with. If you've got questions, there's a cheery Contact Us email link. If you send to that address you get an "address not known on server" non-delivery report.

An ISP advertises a new service in an email for customers. "For more details see the FAQ at..." click on the link: 404 not found. Search the web site for the subject of the email. No pages found.

An email from a major network provider with a legitimate request for information from us. If you've got any queries, ring this number, choose option x. Nope, never heard of the request for the information. Try this number. Nope, never heard of this request. What email address did it come from? Nope, not in our corporate email directiory.

Why can't they check that their links work before sending them out?

[Listening to: Put Yourself In My Place - Kylie Minogue - Ultimate Kylie (CD 2) (04:12)]