IWON on par with AT&T for screwing up

I admit that I have been an IWON user and participant nearly since its inception and have at times enjoyed it and at times being very disappointed by it. I have had a free e-mail account with them for many, many years and have given the address out to very few but still manage to get 98% spam and junk. Personally I think IWON was the source of some of it, and that is beyond the stuff they sent to me on their own behalf which was fine as I had signed up and agreed to the service. It is because of all this spam that they had a way of designating the e-mail as spam without opening it and then they would hopefully id it as such and treat it as such and better id future e-mail as such.

IWON did not do a very good job of it though as they continually had more spam e-mail ending up in the inbox than they were transferring into the spam junk box. The problem seemed to be getting worse rather than better. Now it has gotten worse to the nth degree.

IWON redesigned their e-mail user interface and they got it all wrong. They have put frames in that take up all the valuable real estate that was previously used for viewing the e-mail. The frames are fixed and defined by IWON and are not sizeable. This allows them to dedicate prime space to their advertisers but doesn’t allow you to see the whole picture of your e-mail in any given meaningful way. This is not the worst of it.

In the old system you could highlight an e-mail item from the selection list and label it as spam without opening it. This was safe and smart operating since it is generally easy to know by the topic heading and the senders name if you are receiving a legitimate e-mail or not. The safety factor extended to the fact that by not opening it in the first place you were not in danger of sending back any kind of message that lets the spammers know this is a valid e-mail account.

Under their new system, they have added a preview screen to see the contents of the e-mail as it is selected from the list without opening it into a new window. This is similar to Outlook’s preview ability but with Outlook it is just an option; you decide if the risk is worth the previewed image. IWON does not give you the choice. They have taken away any ability to designate the e-mail as spam without opening it in the preview window. They have also taken away any ability to delete the offending e-mail without opening it in the preview window. Buried in the preferences is the ability to suppress the image viewing which might save you from viewing objectionable images but given their track record I am not sure I want to take that chance.

I have sent them an e-mail voicing my concern but not to the extent I have here. We shall see if there is a response but again based on past problems I am not holding my breath. That is sad as I have been a long time user of IWON and have spent way too many hours playing their games and looking at their advertisements. You would think that I would be considered a valued customer, and would be important enough to listen to. Evidently not.

IWON was also supposed to be about the winning. You always had the chance to win a big million dollar prize or at the very least a few pretty cool lesser prizes. The only thing I have won during that whole long stretch of time is a few Amazon gift cards, hardly sufficient pay for the amount of time spent and adverting revenue that must have generated at my expense. The odds of winning anything in IWON makes playing the Powerball lottery seem a sure bet. The only difference is that instead of putting down hard currency to buy a lottery ticket you were putting down soft currency, you hard earned time.

The games I admit have been fun (some better than others) but with the amount of trouble I have had in using some of them it just doesn’t seem worth it anymore. The last format change was to the gaming screens and they made it so they wouldn’t work using IE. I finally got them to work with the latest edition of Firefox but what a pain and the solution did not come from them. Last time I tried to use Explorer the games still wouldn’t load so they haven’t fixed a thing.

The home page used to be user defined and set up to show many topics of interest to you as an individual like many other search sites such as Yahoo and Google. The page is still there but is lost in the back ground and isn’t worth visiting anymore. The search engine function that was also a main draw is also a losing proposition as they have gone with ASK.com (I think that they are all under the same corporate umbrella) and the searches have gone downhill. They can’t even find this blog no matter how hard you try to ask and direct. After the last redesign you can no longer tell which search results are real and which are advertisements (hint: the advertisements are all listed first and none of them are relevant). In case you haven’t noticed I am still looking for a decent search site.

So to sum up, Dear IWON, three strikes and you are off the list. I have given you the benefit of the doubt and have wished for the best from you. I truly wanted nothing more than for you to be a premier web site that offered great games, useable searches, valued links and information, and a simple effective e-mail account. You had all of these elements at one time but slowly one by one you have lost it. Like so many other companies, you have lost your vision and your way. I say you have lost your vision but I think that you have changed your vision and your direction and it is that which has caused you to lose your way. The web is still a big wide world and it is full of options and choices galore that make it easy to be fickle. So long IWON. Wish you would miss me even half as much as I am going to miss what you were.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farr West.

Biden, really?

Obama chose Joseph Biden to be his running mate? Really? This truly is a socialist ticket from the socialist party.

I can't think of one good thing Biden has ever done but I do know that my memory has him associated with some pretty terrible legislation. Hopefully that will come out but I am sure the media love feast will continue and the kid gloves will be extended to one and all.

No really, is Obama trying to lose the race? I mean I can understand why he wouldn't want to have a Clinton on the ticket (too much baggage for even Charles Atlas to carry), but is the pool of Democratic socialist so thin that this is the best he could come up with?

Perhaps I should stop here because an old phrase is running through my head. If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. I know I am unable to follow that all the time and when it comes to opinions shouldn't, but what if the rest of the media followed that saying just a little bit more themselves? The local and national news hours might last about three minutes, (and that is after the two minute commercial break).

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farr West.