Weekly Release for Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

hi this might take a while i am gratefull to be a member here although nearley computer eliterate forgive me if i understand this wrong do you intend to have a live feed comming off of a live venue open mike session that i can streem off at home here in south africa where i live to be true i joined that i could make contacks in america in the eventual hope i could grase an american stage truely conrad meyer

Don't be too excited yet.

Apercu and Soumettre. Can you explain what exactly it means? I certainly have no clue, but this is what shows up on buttons for my message note in my window right now although the language selection is in english. I also have something showing up as Suivre la discussion. And what does this mean? I have no clue... Your site has suddenly started translating everything according to the location of the isp.

The meetup site is least to say aggrevating. For almost a year I was unable to login using firefox. The site would freeze up and crash. So I missed a lot of meetings. Many of my friends had the same problems and eventually stopped using the site altogether.
And now when the site actually runs without problems in firefox your web developers have created new problems: Everything is now automatically translated to the language where the isp originates.... I don't know WHO has invented this truly idiotic web feature but I know so many who are frustrated with it and can't stand it. The world has become more and more international today and this has to be taken in consideration when you create a website. If you are in Spain, for example, you may still have 20 million people who speak english or another European language. So adding a forced translation into a local language is not wise for any website. You can argue that there is the option to change the language, but this is not true. Changing language options does not disregard the automatic translation of menus, site maps, options, account, etc. The text descriptions are in english if I select english, but everything else is in another language meaning half of the site is not readable.

Most people wont take the time to let you know what their frustrations are with a site; they simply stop using it and look for something else out of all the other millions of options out there. Therefore, common sense is essential when a company develops a website.

Adding truly idiotic features is a great way for a company to lose money and get a bad reputation which can be difficult to reverse.

Its not only the meetup site that uses this completely idiotic feature identifying the isp with a language; even airlines use it, banks use it, paypal uses it, etc. How many millions of people avoid using Spanair, for example, because the website forces them to read everything in Spanish? There are over 40 million travelers to Spain every year and many actually book a ticket from their travel location, if they have entered by train, bus, etc. But they will have a real task trying to book a ticket through the airlines website.
I know AirFrance, for example, has lost over $20,000 per year in revenue just from me since I can't book flights from their website because some nitwit has installed this isp detect language feature into their website. After the frustrations of trying to book with them, I have completely opted to never use this airline even if they would eventually change this feature on their site. Why should I bother when there are hundreds of other airlines out there, and I have already started collecting frequent flier miles with another company? Considering that million of people use an airline like that, I know for sure after speaking with people that there are many, many others who have gone my route and wont book with a specific airline for the same reason. Thus, a web developer has been the cause of perhaps a few more million in annual revenue losses for the company without them even knowing it!
Its pretty sad that common sense is not present when websites are developed for public use today...

We change the language of the site to match the default setting in your browser. We do not do any detection of ISP at all.

In any event, you can change the language for your account by clicking the appropriate language in the sites footer, or by going to your "Account" section. Whatever you pick will be remembered until you change it again.

Thanks for the revamps and updates! We appreciate it very much!
Danielo