Arbitrary Musings

Life has been busy up the yin yang lately. Speaking of that phrase, I looked it up on Urban Dictionary. This definition is accurate, while these are a little bit…off. But anyways, I’ve found that my desire to post has dropped during these times of chaos. My question to you all is this: how do you continue to find inspiration and motivation to write when the world is swirling around you? When some people have a day (whether it be good, bad, or otherwise), they write about it almost immediately in their blog or LiveJournal. I think I’m realizing that I haven’t bridged the gap between real life and blog posting.

Speaking of my blog, they found me. I don’t know how but they found me, and I don’t mean the Libyans. (Man, that was 22 years ago?) “They” refers to the spammers; I’ve been getting tons of comment spam lately. Fortunately you don’t have to see it because I currently moderate comments. In a way, it makes me happy to know that at least someone has looked at a post in order to submit something to say. though it usually revolves around getting viagra, important real estate information, or the fact that some insane amount of money is waiting for me in Vegas. I think I’ll have to try out some anti-spam plugins, but that will have to wait until I upgrade, which I have not gotten around to.

Finally, not that you care, this will be my last post on the 2.2 branch of WordPress. I’ll be jumping into beta territory and moving to 2.3. So, if you don’t see this post, it’s because I did something wrong while upgrading. Of course, you wouldn’t be able to read this since my blog would be broken, and therein lies the paradox. I think I wrote this paragraph just so I could use the phrase “therein lies the paradox.”

So if we tally up this post, I’ve used the following phrases:

• up the yin yang
• have a day
• therein lies the paradox

And I think I’ll wrap this up by wishing you all a great week, and I’ll see you post-upgrade!

If you know anything about me, you know I love Firefox. I’ve used it since the days of Phoenix 0.1, I wear a Firefox t-shirt (though not around the office), and most recently I’ve been alpha testing Gran Paradiso. (Side note: a number of Microsoft employees have complemented me on my Gran Paradiso wallpaper, not noticing the “Firefox 3″ banner being pulled by the airplane). It seems there’s nothing out on the web that I can’t browse with Firefox. Consequently, I was quite surprised when I clicked the link to register at mytravelers.com to pay my renters insurance and received this dialog:

Really? You don’t support a (superior) browser that now holds about 25% market share? What’s the dealio? Not content with that, I checked the FAQ and read this tidbit:

What browsers work best on your website?
For optimal performance we recommend you use one of the following browsers when viewing the site.

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0
• Macintosh Safari 2.0
• Firefox 1.0.7

Firefox 1.0.7? You’re shitting me, right? Well, I checked the source code of the front page, and apparently I am not being shitted. (Is that the right phrase?) I’m no JavaScript expert, but check out this crap code:

else if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Firefox")!=-1)
{
  //Do logon or registration if using 'Firefox1.0.7' or 'Firefox1.5'
  var vers=navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Firefox")+8
  var versionextension=navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Firefox")+10
  var versionindex=navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Firefox")+12
  if ((parseInt(navigator.userAgent.charAt(vers))==1)
	&& (parseInt(navigator.userAgent.charAt(versionindex))==7))

I’ll break it down if you don’t want to read all of that. Any Firefox version other than 1.0.7 or 1.5 will get the “unsupported browser” dialog. Apparently the site hasn’t been touched after October 23rd, 2006, since Firefox 2.0 was released the following day.

I know I’m complaining about this a lot, but the fact of the matter is that most users of the web don’t know what a user-agent string is, much less how to change it. Some users may read the FAQ and choose an alternate browser; others may not read the FAQ at all. (I’m sure I’m in a very small segment of users who check out the source code). Regardless, it gives the impression that Firefox isn’t as compatible as other browsers out on the market, all because a web developer wasn’t very forward thinking when writing code.

I’ve tried to do the right thing and have e-mailed the webmaster; hopefully this issue will be resolved shortly, and there will be one less website where Windows users have to rely on Internet Explorer.

As I was driving in to work this morning, an advertisement came on the radio (which I’ll describe in a bit). I’ve heard this ad before, but this time it served as a stimulus for a blog post. Beware, oh readers, for this entry is on the technical side of my interests. So, turn away now, or stay and (possibly) learn a bit. There’s even a minor rant about the iPhone. Did I get your attention? No matter…Onward!

The theme for this overall post is about some of the technical information that advertisers (or marketing folks) don’t tell you. Now, normally I’d be all for the hiding of tech talk. After all, “speak the user’s language” is a usability heuristic that has been around from some 20-odd years. However, I’m specifically talking about two recent advertisements that:

a) throw a little technical jargon in, but not enough to give the user a clear picture, or
b) hide the technical background which can give a misleading impression of a product/service.

Let’s start with the first advertising method, which is also what prompted this blog entry. While listening my usual morning radio show, an advertisement for Comcast’s high speed internet service came on. Part of the advertisement mentions “blazing 12 Meg speeds,” or something to that matter. The important thing that stuck in my mind is “12 Meg!” Now, I know what that means, but I’m fairly certain that a non-technical user, upon hearing “Meg”, will think of “Megabyte“. Most people who have downloaded something off the big truck series of tubes will relate the transfer of data relative to a second. Therefore, I’m sure that Comcast wanted to give the impression that their service has transfer rates of 12 Megabytes per second.

The problem is that most people don’t know the difference between Megabytes per second and Megabits per second. Since there are 8 bits in 1 byte, you’ll actually see maximum data transfer rates of around 1 ½ Megabytes per second. (Side note: I use this internet service at home, and I haven’t reached that transfer rate). Now, I will grant you, it’s still quite fast in this day and age.  However, my point comes down to this: if the average user knows about Megabytes per second, then advertise it in that fashion!

Okay, we’re halfway through. Still with me? Let’s get onto hiding the technology, and I want to relate it specifically to the iPhone. Since I’m sure this is going to be a touchy subject, let me first state that if I wasn’t locked into my current carrier’s plan, I’d buy one NOW. I want one. With that said, let’s talk about those advertisements that are displayed non-stop. They’re wonderful ads, but they never state the fact that everything you see is done when the phone is in transferring data through Wi-Fi mode and not on the cellular network (EDGE). Why does it matter? Here’s a quote from CNET’s EDGE vs. Wi-Fi test results:

EDGE averaged a download time of 15.69 minutes for a 9.4MB file, while Wi-Fi required a mere 1.18 minutes. In the end, our test results indicate that the iPhone’s Wi-Fi connection is about 13 times faster than using EDGE

What difference could it make in real life? Take a look at this video of browsing the New York Times using AT&T’s EDGE connection.

My grievance isn’t with the iPhone in any way here; rather, it’s the fact that the commercial never mentions the conditions under which the video was made. Not even a disclaimer in microscopic text stating “Wi-Fi connection. Actual speeds may vary.”

So, what the hell am I trying to say? Simply put, be honest when advertising products and services to users. I just needed to get all of that off of my chest. Oh, and buy me an iPhone too.

Unlike the latest Mac ad, my Windows hard drive is quite sparse. I’m very cognizant of what I’m installing, where it’s going, and what version it is. Suffice it to say, no new programs get on it unless I plan to use it frequently and I can trust it.

This brings me to tonight’s tale. There’s been some less-than-subtle pressuring by my girlfriend to share the photos I took during our trip to Vancouver. However, I didn’t want to do it unless I did it right. Memory card readers are everywhere now: they can be found built into computers, monitors, and sold as cheap peripherals to attach to your Win/Mac/Linux box. I suspect that there’s a smaller and smaller population of users who still persist using the importing software that comes with digital cameras. (Coincidentally, I have a lot of qualitative data confirming this that was collected during my recent site visits to watch users in their homes).

Now, I always like to remain very much in control of what’s going on with files in my computer. Historically, I’ve used a wonderful third-party file utility in Windows to copy directories of pictures from the camera’s memory card to a local drive, then use another application to do lossless JPEG rotation and viewing, and yet another program for editing/touch-ups. It was great when I was the only one looking at the pictures. But now with everyone sharing albums on the Interweb, I wanted to use a single program to import, rotate, annotate, upload, and share pictures. I had already used Picasa for simple touch-ups and resizing, but had never used it for a much more complete scenario beginning with the insertion of a card into the computer to the sharing of those photos with friends and family. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I didn’t want to install any more software on my computer. My friend Ankur had recently shared a Picasa Web Album with me; upon further research, I was happy to hear I didn’t need anything other than Picasa itself to share. With Picasa already being used for particular tasks, why not play the role of Joe User and trust that one program could do all the work?

As you can gather from the title, the experience was delightful. Besides a few minor UI qualms that irk me mainly because of my background in design and usability, the flow through the process was smooth. Dialogs had the right amount of information. Commands were where I expected them. Performance was great. And the big question: would I use it next time? Without a doubt, yes.

Wait just one moment, I hear my employer calling. “What’s that? You’re reading this as I’m writing it? And you want me to use the what? The new ‘Windows Picture and Video Import’ in Windows Vista? No thanks, I like what I’m using. And your solution has too many words. While you’re at it, why don’t you read what Paul has to say about the importing tool? No, I don’t want more ‘wow’ in my life. Okay, bye.”

Sorry about that. Let’s recap: Picasa good. Girlfriend happy. No new programs. And a new blog post out of it too!

Let’s face it: many of us spend a lot of time on those social networking sites. And I’m willing to bet that most of you have accounts on more than one of them. By my last count, I’m on six different sites:

• For staying in touch with friends, I use Facebook (my favorite) and Myspace.
• To network with business colleagues, there’s LinkedIn.
• To keep current with events, we have Meetup and Upcoming.

Then there’s the multitude of other sites I’m not currently registered on: Friendster, Orkut, Yahoo 360, Live Spaces, and the list goes on…

Off topic: Notice I put Live Spaces last? The only people I know who use it are employees of Microsoft. I wouldn’t really call that “success”.

Back to the topic at hand. Simply put, there are way too many of these sites for anybody to visit daily, unless you’re unemployed, in college, etc. I’ve seen this type of thing before in other paradigms…

• Users can have several different IM accounts (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, ICQ, IRC, etc.). Instead of having multiple programs at once, new chat clients came along that solved the problem, e.g. Adium (Mac OS X), Gaim (cross-platform), and Trillian (Windows).
• Who doesn’t have more than one e-mail account? Clients like Mozilla Thunderbird (cross-platform) can create a “global” Inbox to collect messages from all your accounts; when you write new messages, you can choose what account you’re writing from.

So, where’s the program or website to manage all the social networking sites? Couldn’t you imagine it?

• You’d have one area to read and write all “public” messages; these would map to your MySpace comments, your Facebook wall, etc.
• Another part of the program/site collects your private messages.
• Contacts could be grouped by service; you could create “meta-contacts” that represents the same person on multiple services.
• Etc.

Is this out there? Is someone creating this? Have I just lost a million dollar idea? By the way, if this service is out there, the would-be creator has not done a great job of promoting their innovation.

Welcome to my first blog posting not related to the setup and configuration of WordPress. While I really want to concentrate on getting WordPress up and running the way I like it, I don’t want to avoid those events that are part of the purpose of setting up a blog.

Side note: There will be some forthcoming ground rules about what I will/will not blog about. Most anything that happens at work that isn’t publicly in the news won’t be posted; however, since there’s no confidential information here, I believe it falls in the exception category.

With that out of the way, I got an interesting e-mail at work on Friday. I asked a co-worker who was not in my immediate team if we could set some time aside to discuss some results from a past usability study. Her reply was brief, consisting of 3 sentences. The third sentence was:

Go ahead and send me an s+.

An s+? Well, looking in the “New” pane of Outlook, I see I can send a Mail, an Appointment, a Meeting Request, a Task, etc. Nothing beginning with s. Searching in Outlook Help for s+ doesn’t give me anything useful. While my first inclination is to use Google, I figure I’ll give my employer the benefit of the doubt and use Live Search with the query “s+ outlook”. After looking at the first three pages of results, I decide to go back to my trusted search engine. Not surprisingly, the results give me the link to something useful on the first page (which, coincidentally, is another blog talking about the use of s+).

The thing that gets me is that s+, which is shorthand for Schedule+, is a product that ceased development in 1997. Um, hello, 10 years ago? And people are still propagating the use of this abbreviation? Seriously, how much harder is it to write “send me a meeting request” instead of “send me an s+”? Meeting request: clear and understandable. And I just wrote it twice in this paragraph. As an added benefit, you don’t have to reach your pinky finger over to the = key while holding down the shift key. Less effort for your pinky finger, and less cognitive effort for my brain. Win win situation.

So, what did we learn? Or, in corporate lingo, what are our “key takeaways”?

1. If there’s any possibility that people in your intended audience aren’t familiar with your abbreviation, it will inevitably cause more effort on the part of those users to figure out what those abbreviations mean.
2. Stop using abbreviations based on products which have gone the way of the dodo. You don’t see me referring to multitasking by saying “Shh, I’m DESQviewing.”
3. Live Search has a long way to go if it can’t even figure out a query that has a key piece of MicroSpeak.