handling

I have an old Perl project that goes out to a Government web site, ftp's some files, massages them in various ways, and spits out some output. Over time, the project grew, and now does more than it used to.

A vulnerability in Skype's VoIP software could have permitted file transfers from one Skype user to another without requiring consent from the recipient.

Missing data can be very annoying to a programmer. In fact, it is so annoying that very often we'll write separate programs to clean up data and eliminate unpleasant conditions so that the main program doesn't have to deal with it. Here, I'll show some examples of the kind of problems we see.

Imagine this, a co-worker enters your office and says: "Cathy, could I talk with you for a minute? I'm having a real problem with...." You glance at your watch and think of the report that's due in an hour. What do you do?

If shipping and handling is one of your profit centers, you already know that this can be an expensive and time-consuming aspect of your business operations. Try these tips:

Each and every day, we all make promises. We make these promises in many different ways, and in a variety of forms. A promise can be as simple as "I'll call you back", or as committing as "I promise to get that done!"

Everyone has seen an HTTP 404 error at some point. You follow a link on a web page, and BOOM - File not found. Perhaps the author spelt it incorrectly, or the page was uploaded to the server by mistake. I'll show you how to handle this gracefully*, and send an email to yourself so the problem gets fixed. But first, what did I mean when I said "Make money from error handling"?

In the middle of last year (June 2001), Amazon.com made headlines by announcing that they were going to offer free shipping and handling for any purchases over $99. Is this a trend for the future? Maybe...but only for the rich. While Amazon's offer brought millions of dollars worth of publicity to the company, not too many of us regular ecommerce website owners can afford to offer free shipping and handling. The latest issue of eMarketer's "eCommerce: B2C & Demographics" emphatically states that shipping and handling is a "sizable" business expense. The online metrics company, Jupiter, stated that 45% of ecommerce website owners loose money on shipping and handling.