Springer LNCS, or, How not to do alerts!
I subscribe to Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) alerts. Several times now, I have received alerts when there was no web content at the URLs that they sent me. Very annoying, wasting my time. Please, this is 2009: try and make things work!.
The latest was yesterday: at Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:53:35 -0700 (PDT) I got an alert email from Springer LNCS:
Going to this page (as of Tues 14:26 ET July 21 2009, ~24hrs later), or to any of the URLs for the articles (including DOIs, like http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03070-3_5) gives me - No, not an error page - but a BLANK PAGE:
How hard is it to make sure you don't send out alerts with links to web pages until after the linked-to pages actually have the content you are planning on presenting?
And at least try and have a decent error page when you do not have the content in place.
Oh, and 1999 called, they wants their web infrastructure back.
[Of course, by the time you read this entry these URLs may be working...]
Update: 2009 07 21 16:03 ET: Now when I go to the above pages, instead of a blank page I get a general launching-off page for SpringerLink:
Still not good enough! :-)
Update: 2009 07 21 22:40 ET:
Now the URLs for the articles work:
but the URLs for the publication do not:
The latest was yesterday: at Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:53:35 -0700 (PDT) I got an alert email from Springer LNCS:
Dear Glen Newton,
We are pleased to deliver your requested table of contents alert
for a new volume of "Lecture Notes in Computer Science",
subseries: "Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence".
Volume 5632: Machine Learning and Data Mining in Pattern Recognition
by Petra Perner
is now available on the SpringerLink web site at
http://springer.r.delivery.net/r/r?2.1.Ee.2Tp.1gRdiL.ByTshW..N.I9y2.3DBm.bW89MQ%5f%5fDJNcFRf0
Going to this page (as of Tues 14:26 ET July 21 2009, ~24hrs later), or to any of the URLs for the articles (including DOIs, like http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03070-3_5) gives me - No, not an error page - but a BLANK PAGE:
How hard is it to make sure you don't send out alerts with links to web pages until after the linked-to pages actually have the content you are planning on presenting?
And at least try and have a decent error page when you do not have the content in place.
Oh, and 1999 called, they wants their web infrastructure back.
[Of course, by the time you read this entry these URLs may be working...]
Update: 2009 07 21 16:03 ET: Now when I go to the above pages, instead of a blank page I get a general launching-off page for SpringerLink:
Still not good enough! :-)
Update: 2009 07 21 22:40 ET:
Now the URLs for the articles work:
but the URLs for the publication do not:
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