ikeepitreal

Every so often -- about quarterly, I'd say -- the frustrations I have with software boil to a head. Funny, because, I WORK CREATING SOFTWARE. I can't imagine how some of the less technical people I know are expected to use some of this stuff without becoming walking balls of pent-up software-hating frustration. So excue me while I rant:

Software Problem #1: The Credit Union is Too Smart for Their Own Good

Last weekend, my online bank upgraded its website. They were down for 4 days (scheduled). Fine. I like them. I like their UI. If they want to improve it, great. But here's the deal -- when you build something uber-creaky and dumb to replace something *ok*, that is not acceptable.

I logged into the website on Thursday to pay a couple of lingering bills. All my money and existing payees are there (phew). Wouldn't want to have to set that all up again. But it is virtually the same bill pay interface as before. Enter the dollar amount next to the payees you want to send to and click "Submit". There is only one new 'feature' I saw. They did away with the stupid check-boxes next to each of the payees to confirm. Cool. Only one problem -- when I hit submit, it said I couldn't schedule the payments because the date wasn't a business day. Fine -- I'll forgive the fact that your software probably could have auto-picked a day that was a business day, or even skipped the 2 day waiting period to schedule it on Friday. I'll change the date myself -- clunky but alright.

Only it's not alright. They have put a downward pointing triangle (or blade if you are a Di Vinci Code fan) next to the date. Only problem? TO ME AND EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD, THIS SIGNIFIES A DROP-DOWN BOX. Not here. When you click on it, a new window JavaScript Calendar pops up (slowly). Lame, but again -- fine. I can deal. I am nothing if not flexible. So I pick Monday, May 8th. No go. I get an error, the date isn't changed. Looks like someone forgot to test on Firefox on OS X. Sheesh -- I knew they were using aspx, but that is ugly.

So... I exhale and inhale slowly, and count to ten. I'll just edit the date by hand. I hate calendar pickers anyway. I click in the date box and it's editable! Woo-hoo! Why didn't I just do this in the first place? Only not so much. When I submit with the changed date (changed in all of my payment rows), it still reads May 6th and gives me the same error. I am now locked out from paying bills online until 2 days before each business day. BAD.

Software Problem #2: Sony Gets Bit by the 'Easy' Software Way Out

I wake up this morning, and it's Sunday -- 2 days before a business day right? Sweet. I'll pay my bills and while I'm at it, check this week's mail for more. I got a few :( But also a letter from Sony. A quote from the letter:

Dear Valued Sony Customer:

Our records indicate that you recently purchased a ...(serial numbers)... We have recently learned that a limited number of these televisions manufactured through November 2005 temporarily may not, after a long period of time depending upon usage, turn either on or off due to a software issue. This condition is easily resolved with a simple software upgrade provided by Sony at no charge.

Ok, that is just wrong. I understand putting software in the TV -- It has a built-in HDTV tuner and some other cool features that probably require it. BUT TO TURN THE SCREEN ON AND OFF? That is crazy. Everyone knows that software is way more buggy than hardware. It is easier to develop, so of course it is tempting to allow it to creep where it doesn't belong. But there is absolutely no excuse that a software problem should ever get in the way of turning the TV on and off. Yikes. Now I have to schedule a Sony technician to come install the upgrade. I'm assuming there is some proprietary port in the back somewhere so only they can drop the new bits in. Sigh.

Software Problem #3: The Bank is at it Again

Back to the bills. One of the bills in my pile of mail is a new payee -- we just got officially annexed by the city of Issaquah, so my water bill goes somewhere else. After I (finally) pay my other bills sucessfully I click on the payees to add a new one (not sure why I can't add one in the same UI as paying bills, but whatever. Just another thing they didn't bother to fix with their "system upgrade"). I add the payee, and back to the bill pay screen. Not there. Hmmm. I go back to the payees -- there it is! Back to bill pay? Not there. So now I wait -- is there any reason why there should be latency between when you enter a payee to when you can actually pay a bill with that payee? 99% of the time someone needs to add a new payee, they want to pay them a bill.

Software Problem #4: This One is Kind of a Cheap Shot

Google. I love 'em, but they sure are getting easier to hate (like any good alpha dog) lately. The whining about IE 7 is the latest crazyness. According to GOOG -- MS should give users a choice to pick a search engine on first browser load, not just as a property. Dear Google -- you guys should just be happy you even got a property to switch at all considering all the Google/MS tension going around.

But that's not my beef. We are all familiar with the fact that Google products are perpetually in Beta, so they get a bit of free pass (and that is why this is a cheap shot). But I start relying on these products the minute they are pushed out the door.

I have to say -- the new calendar is pretty amazing. Pretty sweet things they are doing with JavaScript. Becky and I got so excited, we shoved all our ICal and paper calendar stuff up there. Then this morning, when I need to put the appointment with (who else) Sony on my calendar, it stops working. And not in an obvious way -- I added an appointment, it shows up on the calendar, only (later) a message says "Failed to create event". That's the beauty of AJAX -- the client thinks it worked, but it didn't suceed on the server. Nice.

Obviously I could go into the standard speech now about how software companies should test more, spend more time in UI research. But it's never going to happen. The ROI isn't worth it. Consumers are too tolerant of this crap. I'd like to say I can fix these types of problems at Expedia, but there will always be pressure to get products out too fast and to cut testing and design resources. From a business standpoint, it just makes too much sense.

So prepare for another one of these here rants in 3 months.

Posted by Mike at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friends and readers -- After the long break and the painful process of getting up on the proverbial horse again, I have accepted a Program Manager position with Expedia.com. I start tomorrow. And this will probably be the last time I write about my job, because we know what happens to people who blog about their work.

I'm pretty excited to be working on consumer software and to get some domain expertise in the travel business. What I'm not excited about is people singing the "DOT COM" jingle after I tell them I work at Expedia. Anyhoo, if you have any ideas how to make the site better or online travel better in general, I'd love to hear them (and pass them off as my own) .

Wish me luck, I always do something stupid my first week at a new job.

Posted by Mike at 05:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A couple of weeks ago I picked up the Apple Mighty Mouse. One of the things I missed most about Windows was right-clicking, and -- I know, I know -- while I could have just used a regular 2-button mouse, I wanted to stay with the sexy Apple-branded style. Cuz that's how I roll...

Apple certainly thinks outside the box when creating hardware. Some of the biggest discussion points about this mouse are:

1) There is a little speaker in the mouse that makes a clicking sound when you scroll using the wheel. Kind of like the sound that ipods make while scrolling. Who thought of that? Is it easier to control scrolling when you can hear it? Mimicing physical clicking noises is pretty smart, IMHO.

2) The right-click trigger. The mouse still only has one clicking mechanism, but 2 sensors under the fingers to tell which is being pressed. Only thing is, they apparently only allow a right-click when your finger is completely off the left side. As this article points out, why even have a touch sensor on the right side? Anyway, this is a problem for the users who keep their index finger down while right-clicking (I don't do that, apparently). Pretty fun to test/fool though.

Other new features that I haven't found useful yet -- horizontal scrolling, squeeze buttons, and scroll wheel click. I've got the latter two turned on and tied to expose' and dashboard, but I don't use those anyway :)

Overall, I got what I expected -- a good optical mouse that allows me to right-click and looks and feels like an Apple product.

Posted by Mike at 07:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last week, Google unveiled its portal. The thing is, they claim it's not one. Um, yeah -- I'm not a 5'5" pasty white dude either. Calling it a "personalized homepage" isn't fooling anyone. Anyhoo, before I launch directly into my gripes, I should mention a few of the things I like:

* Drag and drop of portlets. The way they did it is perfect. In true GOOG style, it is simple, clean, and sexy.

* Gmail integration off the bat. my.yahoo.com took *forever* to get mail integration, and Google's is way better. The extra milliseconds to load the Yahoo! mail portlet made it seem clunky, and this one is snappy.

* Decent content choices. My guess is they probably tried to do some other obvious things like sports scores and configurable news, but were unable to for the first cut. What they did get was ok. News/Mail/Weather/Stocks seem like good first choices.

Now for the frustrating things:

* The name. Why they are even waffling and refusing to name it "my.google.com" is beyond me. The pissing contest where they refuse to be equated with Yahoo! has gone too far. Weak sauce. Listen guys -- everyone is standardizing on "my" for their personalized content. Amazon, Yahoo!, MSN. Just go with the flow.

* I can't remove the search bar. Doesn't everyone have a google toolbar or browser/search integration by now? Well, probably not -- but those of us who do would like to remove the search bar from our "portal" if we are going to look at it 30-40 times a day.

* No RSS support. I don't really like the way Yahoo! has done this, so I keep waiting for something good here from Google. It's likely this just didn't make the first cut, but frustrating nonetheless. Especially considering RSS is on Google's radar, but only to push ads thru.

* No thumbnails. I think Google News does a good job incorporating thumbnails with news stories. Seems like it would have been easy to bring into the portal. There is only so much text one man can take.

* Some portlets aren't configurable enough. This is nitpicky, but why should I only be able to see 3 movies? What if -- say for instance -- I'm a junkie who only cares about sports news?

Overall, it's a pretty mediocre effort AFAIC. This is something lots of users have been waiting for. If they spent a little more time fine-tuning portlets and inking more content deals, I'd be on board. Well, I'll probably be on board regardless once the wrinkles get ironed out. Google loves to hide behind the (seemingly continual) "betaness" or "labs" tags on their products, but some obvious things here are missing and this one wasn't as ready as maps, gmail, and desktop search.

Posted by Mike at 06:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Oh how I wish it were...

Posted by Mike at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I always feel like I'm namedropping when I reference a story from NPR. But what are you going to do?

I heard on NPR yesterday morning about a group of users (drivers? auto enthusiasts?) who are hacking their Priuses. The most common one is a kit that will allow you to run in electric only mode. This mod is standard everywhere but North America. The guest was saying that people with short commutes and those who don't have to go faster than about 34 can stay in electric mode for a whole trip using this switch. The only way I can see this actually saving MPG though is if the battery is often fully charged, and not being used. (Maybe this is common?)

On the other hand, this could save a lot of emmisions and money on gas. People are adding battery packs and plugs to their batteries to allow them to eek even more efficiency out and to pull power off the (hopefully clean sourced) grid. The twist -- Toyota is not a fan and will void the warranty for anyone doing this. Voiding the warranty on your Tivo or laptop is one thing, but a $20,000 vehicle? That is dedication.

The other thing I've heard about Toyota Hybrids is that the battery runs out and will cost >10K to replace. Apparently that is a canard.

Posted by Mike at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow. I had a post prepared in my mind yesterday on how I thought it was just a matter of time before GOOG bought Flickr. It was not an unpopular opinion. These links are harder to find today, however, because they are cluttered with the news that Yahoo bought Flickr yesterday.

Google seemed like a more natural fit to me because Flickr appeared to be biting their UI at every opportunity. I almost expected to see an "I'm Feeling Lucky" button somewhere on the site.

My first reaction to this is negative, because I was hoping to get Picasa 2 integration with Flickr and because I think Yahoo is more likely to ruin a good thing. Yahoo Photos doesn't exactly give me the warm fuzzies about where it may be heading, and AFAIK, Yahoo doesn't have a track record for exposing APIs or services to developers. Maybe this will kickstart Yahoo to turn over a new leaf, but I think it's more likely to turn out bad for current Flickr users.

Posted by Mike at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A friend of mine had a lark to start a business making Lojak devices for pets. Give him $20 a month and he'll make sure your pet doesn't disappear. While I still think this is a terrible idea, it may have some merit. Looks like someone has already done it for babies.

Update 3/8 -- ok. Found the pet thing too.

The nurses at Overlake Hospital are *very* careful not to mix up babies or let one get away. Right after Sam was born he got one of these on his right ankle and a ID tag on his left ankle and right wrist (Mom and Dad got matching ones). If somehow he gets out of a certain set of doors with the ankle device on, an outer set of doors goes into lockdown.

Other strange rules:

- You aren't allowed to hold a baby outside of one of the rooms. They must always be wheeled around in the hospital-provided bassinet.

- When a nurse brings your kid back from a checkup or his (cough) circumcision, they get real serious and say "Sir, please read me your ID number". I appreciate the double-checking, but I think we got sent home with wrong kid. This one looks like he's Caucasian.

- You have to count all feedings and diapers on a special chart. A general rule of thumb is 1 diaper the first day, 2 the second, and so on. Since Sam made 8 special treats for Mom and Dad yesterday, I think we are doing ok on this rule. :)

Posted by Mike at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In the past 5+ years at BEA, instant messaging has gone from nonexistent to ubiquitous, right there with email and face-to-face as the way communication gets done. This change is significant, but what is really interesting to me is the way people use IM statuses at work.

At first, the standard button-down "Away from my desk" or "Out to lunch" was commonplace. IM was just another boring tool. Somewhere along the line that changed. Here are some status trends I've seen:

- Using IM status instead of work at home or travelling mail. Bonus: this one really qualifies as a "status"!

- Using status to complete a sentence with your ID. Something like "ikeepitreal needs caffeine". Apparently doing this has a history going back to IRC.

- Lyrics to a song you are listening to. This turns into a trivia contest sometimes, with other people "echoing" your lyrics with lyrics from the same song in their status. Note: It is not cool to acknowledge someone's status with an IM. You must respond in kind.

- Linking to funny/cool stuff. Status links are the new email forwards! Not as intrusive, but every bit as distracting. To the point where I only look at status links a couple of times a day. This is also the category where people IM you to say "you are so going to get fired for that".

- Changing statuses while in a IM chat. This is a not-so-subtle way to talk smack. Let's say I'm playing someone at YM chess. I can change my status to "is good at chess" to let the world know, and get in a dig at my opponent at the same time. Two birds, baby.

Sometimes I really feel like I know someone even though all I get is strange glimpses into their personality via their statuses. Kind of sick, really. I'm going to get up from my desk and talk to someone now. Face-to-face!

Posted by Mike at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)