I was unimpressed by my first visit to Aldi. Seems like Walmart prices, with less selection. But I have to be honest, I didn't give them a thorough vetting, because I was immediately put off by the need to produce a quarter as a deposit on a shopping cart (I remember when that experiment came in, and I am pretty sure I haven't seen it in over 20 years; I get the logic, but in this day and age, now that MSP street parking is digital, the chances of me having a quarter on me are zip.).

I ran across this interesting article. The headline grabbed my eye--"brutally efficient" is clickbait for me. I was amused that it led with the quarter thing. But as a sworn enemy of overpriced, branded consumer packaged goods, this is what makes me feel like I should give Aldi another chance:

Bargain hunters across the income ladder end up feeling like they’re outsmarting other, higher-priced supermarkets and big brands when they see their grocery receipts. Aiming to be the "smart shopping alternative,” Aldi wants to "spread the message that traditional grocers and brands simply rip off consumers,” she said.

Music to my ears. Also, maybe the long-anticipated nationwide consolidation of grocery outlets is beginning.

Commercial Push Notifications Are the New Marketing Email

I installed the new Sam's Club Scan & Go app on my phone. It is invaluable--you check yourself out. So what does Sam's treat me to? This inane push notification. Like I don't know I can buy potential Memorial Day party supplies at Sam's. They would be so much better off holding their fire for something that might actually be useful. Even if that means they never push anything at me. Or maybe something 1-2 times per year, telling me how much I have saved via their lower prices. Or an occasional, general-purpose coupon.



Because there is a beautifully simple, zero-tolerance response to these kind of dumb-assery:

Highlighting and Annotating on the Web: Business Opportunity for Medium

I read a lot, and I am a big fan of highlighting. For years I have thought good highlighting/annotating of web docs needs to be much easier. I have dabbled with various extensions. They are okay, but still kind of high friction, especially when it comes to sharing--my primary reason for highlighting. At work, I often resort to pasting into a Word doc and using Track Changes.

I would really like this to be a W3C standard and built into browsers (no I don't have all the technical details). But in the absence of that, it seems like a decent incremental opportunity for Medium. (I'm not a big fan of unnecessarily centralized blogging, but just saying...)

Jargonwatch: Double-Click

Business term, meaning to delve further into a subject. Seems to be supplanting drill-down.

Double-click is a computer input action. The odd thing is, double-clicking has been deprecated by most IT useability gurus for a decade or more. So odd that it is suddenly cropping up in this sense.

The Two-Party System, Isn't

It's amazing how ingrained is the idea of the "two-party system"in the American consciousness. But unless I am very mistaken, it is not a two-party system, it is a two-party happenstance that has ossified into an utterly dysfunctional status quo.

I think it is generally accepted that our founders--worshiped for their acumen and foresight, often with considerable reason--were not generally favorable disposed toward political parties. The system they bequeathed us was not oriented toward parties, and certainly not enshrining a sclerotic, potentially un-reformable diad of Republicans and Democrats.

So as a first step towards reform, how about if we understand and acknowledge that the two-party system is an accident, not a system.

First Smart Elevator Experience

I spent the first 12 years of my career at Otis Elevator. It wasn't the best fit, but things you do early in life inevitably leave an impression. So I am always mildly interested in elevators vertical transportation technology.

Last week I had my first encounter with "smart elevators". Something that was talked about at the time I joined the Old Elevator Company (c. 1987), but seemed very futuristic back then. In the ensuing years, I knew they had become a reality, but being a creature of the suburbs, I rarely encounter any kind of elevator; and smart elevators are only going to be relevant in a >7 floor building with a bank of 4+ 'vators.

So it was interesting and gratifying to see them in action. There are no buttons inside the car--you make your choice of destination floor while standing in the hallway. The people I was visiting said that when they get in a normal elevator, they are prone to step in and do nothing, forgetting that they need to register their floor destination from inside the cab.

Definitely major progress.

Feature Ideas for Spoiler Prevention

The world does not appreciate the anti-spoiler mindset. It is most crucial in sports. I'm only a modest sports watcher, but ever since it became possible not to suffer through timeouts, halftimes, replay holdup, I have been all-in on tape-delayed viewing. I know I am still in the minority in this regard, which itself is a subject for bafflement.

Better spoiler protection for sports is WAY overdue. I would like to see all social media apps include anti-spoiler-walls in their editors. E.g., "click REVEAL to reveal spoiler text". Same goes for professional publications--newspaper websites are often the worst offenders. 

Some of the Youtube.tv ux is just daft. It should be thoughtful enough to consider, if I have set something to record, I don't want to see the score in the thumbnail.

Spoiler prevention is by no means limited to sports. Plot giveaways are the worst. I will say there is more sensitivity there. But my advanced anti-spoilerism extends even beyond that. If you know how many episodes are left in a series, or how much time is left in a show, that has spoiler-ish implications. I would love options to suppress even that info.

Forward-THinking Municpal Minibus Uber

Uber doesn't cut down car usage, it cuts down mass transit usage. So while in some ways I can't wait to see the advent of autonomous vehicles, another part of me dreads it, knowing anything that drives down the cost--in depreciation and driver time--of individual transportation will only make the problem worse.

I feel like a good solution would be a municipally-operated minibus version of Uber. Proper taxing of carbon and transport infrastructure would also help. Maybe HOV-style public-only lanes as well.

Yelp $$ Scale Needs Work

I've been quite happy with my Yelp experience over the 8 or so years I have been using it. I am not a super-heavy Yelper, but I use it steadily, mostly when looking for restaurants while traveling. I honestly can never remember being disappointed, and often have found real, out-of-the-way gems.

But one area that Yelp has been weak in, with zero improvement, is the $ cost ratings. Yelp assigns 1-4 $igns to give an indication of a restaurant's cost. Very important information, obviously. Problem is, the way the scale is used in practice throws away most of the bandwidth. One $ is fast-food-level. Two $$ covers everything a competent but unremarkable family diner, up to a pretty good, independent restaurant. That is easily a factor of 2X--entrees from $10 to over $20. Three $$$ is somewhere many would consider a one-every-5-years splurge, and $$$$ is "take out a bank loan".

So most of the time, I am in the $$ range, and the range is too broad for my liking.