Tix Too Expensive

I have to say, I think this is a good thing. I am familiar with the economics, marketing, politics and even aesthetics around the topic of new stadiums and arenas, but I still think it is a colossal waste to replace a perfectly good, 25-year old stadium, just because the ashtrays are full and the upholstery is worn. So I celebrate the fact that they can't sell out these expensive new venues. That it is NYC teams is just the icing on the cake.

Is This Seat Taken? In Front Rows of New Ballparks, Not Yet

After spending $2.3 billion on new stadiums packed with suites, restaurants and the latest technology, the Mets and the Yankees expected fans to pay top dollar for prime seats.

Instead, as the Times's Ken Belson reports, the Mets and the Yankees face a public-relations nightmare and possibly millions of dollars in lost revenue after failing to sell about 5,000 tickets to each of their first few games after last week's openers.

Should Be Standard: Paste As Unformatted

MS Word and other Microsoft Office apps have a menu option "Paste Special". This lets you control how the contents of the clipboard are pasted into wherever you are pasting them into. This is very useful, because it allows you to paste text without pasting its format. More often than not, that is the default effect I want. In MS-Word, my fingers have become trained to press the key sequence ALT-E, S, U, ENTER--almost as fast as they do CTRL-V.

So my wish is that all text editors would implement this functionality (or at least all text editors that read HTML; very simple text editors, such as forms, that do not allow for the formatting of text effectively are hard-wired to do this).

GPS Review for NAV 740

I finally broke down and bought a GPS for the car. I hate getting list, and I figured they had finally gotten cheap enough. I have always heard good things about Garmin, but they seemed pricey, so I got the NAV 740, which was PC Magazine's Editor's Choice. The three key features, for the price were the 4.3" widescreen form factor, a good POI database, and text-to-speech.

I've only had it a couple of weeks, but so far so good. Parts of the UI are a little kludgy, but the main screen I find to be very, very nice. Everything you need, right where you need it and well laid-out. At $90 all-in (Amazon), a tremendous bargain.

As the user reviews I read before purchasing indicated, battery life is very weak. I have tested it, and it seems like 2 hours in standard GPS mode. That is with a new battery, I imagine in a year it will be almost worthless in battery mode. It's a shame it doesn't take standard AAA batteries--it certainly seems like the form factor is big enough to accomodate them.

A few states, MN being one of them, prohibit attaching anything to the windshield. So I had to buy a friction mount for the dashboard. It is pretty elegant in its simplicity (here is the Arkon mount I got, at a great price). The suction cup attaches to the surface. The mount is very heavy, and has a rubber bottom, so it inhibits sliding over the slick dash. You wouldn't think that would be enough, on a down-sloped dash like mine, but it really works fine. An advantage is that is makes it easier to remove and hide when parking.

Mexican Drug Cartel Violence Spills Over, Alarming U.S.

We need to wake up and discard ideology. Guns are instrumental in killing people; assault weapons are instrumental in killing lots of people, and law-enforcement people. The collective American conscience should be very, very disturbed by what is happening in Mexico. Maybe this is the wake-up call:

Tucson is coping with a wave of drug crime the police suspect is tied to the battles between Mexico's drug cartels.

Newsweek has an article noting the Obama administration's lack of willingness to tackle the issue right now: Obama Gets Gun-Shy. In terms of practical politics, I can see why that is their position.

Dying Midwestern Cities

I have been morbidly following the plummeting fortunes of Detroit. For years, since the end of the SUV boom, even before the current auto-industry crash, it has been evident that Detroit was on its way to becoming a giant Gary, Indiana. So I tend to read articles about other downtrodden midwestern cities. It is very depressing and sobering. In a single day, I came across articles on these 3 cities:
Anderson, Indiana

Pontiac, Michigan

Cleveland, Ohio

And this article pretty much sums up the topic

Meeting People You Have Only Spoken To

It is weird when you finally meet someone face-to-face that you have had a phone relationship with for months. You develop a mental picture of what they look like, and then you find they don't match it. Sort of like when you see a movie of your favorite book, and the characters don't look like what you had pictured.

Lagging Economic Indicators

WSJ article that says the recession is now hitting healthcare hard. It seems that various industries and specialties that thought they were recession-resistant are discovering that they are merely lagging indicators.

Cut Them Some Slack

Friedman: If you want to guarantee that America becomes a mediocre nation, then just keep vilifying every public figure struggling to find a way out of this crisis who stumbles once — like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner or A.I.G.’s $1-a-year fill-in C.E.O., Ed Liddy — and you’ll ensure that no capable person enlists in government. I totally agree with this sentiment.

Bailout v. 3

Krugman: Even more important, however, is the way Mr. Obama is squandering his credibility. If this plan fails — as it almost surely will — it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to persuade Congress to come up with more funds to do what he should have done in the first place.

I heard Krugman on NPR today, and he made 3 points I totally agree with:

• This is a re-hash of the Paulsen plan that was discarded months ago
• It probably won't work at all, and if it does anything, it will be because the government is so heavily subsidizing the investment
• The mindset behind this type of plan continues to be "the toxic assets have more value than the market is assigning to them"
• We should quit calling them "toxic assets"

This Will Become A Major Problem

Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the Internet, directly violating the judge's instructions and centuries of legal rules. But when the judge questioned the rest of the jury, he got an even bigger shock.

Eight other jurors had been doing the same thing. The federal judge, William J. Zloch, had no choice but to declare a mistrial, wasting eight weeks of work by federal prosecutors and defense lawyers.

Don't Go to the Dealer for Service

Dave Winer's experience with BMW...

Idea for A Cleaner Way to Manage TSRs

It's ridiculous how Windows PCs suffer from the computer equivalent of COPD. Our home computer has reached the advanced stage, where it is still useable, but decidedly unpleasant. I will soon need to re-install the O/S.

One contributor to the degenerative "cruft" is all the stuff that wants to automatically load any time you boot up. This stuff can be divided into categories such as:
1. Enhanced drivers, like for printers.
2. Updaters--like Adobe, and various software. Those really seem like a waste.
3. Event handlers, like software for burning CDs.

It seems like Windows could have a unified model for registering these handlers. So for categories 1 and 3, the driver registers the events it wants to respond to. When those events occur, Windows either starts the utility, or gives the user a choice of selecting which utility to start and use. Similar to the way Windows responds when you insert a memory card with JPGs on it. For category 2, just set a frequency to run any given updater--there is absolutely no reason to have that updater sitting in memory at all times.

Advanced features

• Let the user specify which things really should load all the time, for truly important utilities. Needless to say, the user can opt out of that setting with a simple un-check.

Car Alarms Are USELESS

I wonder if, in the entire history of car alarms, they have even once led to the prevention of a theft? They are such a gigantic nuisance, they should be banned. I don't understand why Lojack has not taken off.

Fwd: Verizon Friends and Family

Finally someone is challenging T-Mobile's Faves. I've been wondering what has taken so long. Although I think I heard that the minimum minutes for Verizon is 1400, whereas T-Mobile offers Faves at lower minutes levels.

The other mobile carriers have left T-Mobile to have this differentiator for a good 3 years or more. It let me knock $20 off my monthly bill, by going from 2000 minutes per month down to 1000--and we still only use a fraction of those most months. Since I work from home often, and spend most of my day on conference calls, this feature was decisive in my selection of T-Mobile. (Hint: Faves won't accept 800 numbers, so you will need to find out the local version of your conference number.)

Why Are There So Many Wheel Types for Cars?

I had to buy steel rims for my 2005 Ford Focus, and nobody local had them. It seems like it should be possible for there to be half a dozen standardized rim configurations that could accomodate 90% of passenger vehicles.

The variations in price were shocking. Tires Plus was $92, the Ford dealer an outrageous $175, and Discount Tire was the low bidder at $55. All for the same hunk of steel.

Nike's Web Site is AWFUL!

Okay, I just went to Nike's website for the first, and probably last, time. In about 3 minutes, I was severely hampered by 4 major problems:

1. The front door requires you to select a language. However, something bizarre is going on in the interface, because try as I might, I could not get it to "take" my selection of English.
2. But I did succeed in selecting Czech. And once I selected Czech, that selection was cached in my browser, and I could not get back to the select language front door--it always took me right into the Czech-localized version of the Nike.com site.
3. I attempted to overcome that problem by using a different browser, and using a search to enter the U.S.-localized site via a deep link.
4. My first try at this brought me in the wrong door, and when I tried back up, I found that Nike had committed the unpardonable sin of re-directing the back button. Easily overcome, but highly irritating.
5. Finally, when I got to the right door, I was greeted by the "Download flash to use this site" message. Eventually, I found my way to the non-flash option (not easy to find, buried, in favor of requiring people to go install flash).
6. At this point, I was quite exhausted, and when my first search failed, I didn't have the energy to keep searching. Good-bye, Nike.

How Could Obama's Speechwriters Let This Slip?

"And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."

First of all, a nation didn't invent the automobile, an individual, a small group or at most a company invented it. Not a nation. And second, the nation in which the inventors, Daimler and Maybach, lived, was Germany, not America.

I love my country, the United States, I subscribe to a significant extent in American Exceptionalism, and I fervently hope our best days are not behind us. But holding such beliefs does not, should not, require frequent, incorrect, un-supported assertions such as:

• Americans are the hardest-working people in the world (that title probably goes to subsistence farmers in any number of undeveloped locales). I don't want to be the hardest-working person. I would like to be the smartest-working person.
• Our [blank] system is the best in the world...clinging to that outdated belief might explain why we have tolerated decades of excessive inflation in healthcare costs.
• We invented the English language.
• Our companies and workers can out-compete anybody, if given a level playing field.

That kind of mindless semi-jingoism doesn't serve anybody well.

(Note: I can easily forgive this mistake on the part of a busy President, but the speechwriters are not excused.)

Shipping from Home

I don't know what rock I have hiding under, but I have just discovered self-service online shipping. Just create your UPS or USPS account, print your label, schedule your pickup, and you are done. You don't really even have to worry about weighing the package too closely, because if you are off, they will just charge you more or less accordingly.

Being a procrastinator about certain things--I hate special trips for just one thing, such as shipping--it tends to take me a long time to get things shipped. Why in the world I didn't catch on to this idea sooner, I don't quite know. I take it as an indictor of how strongly consumer habits can be, once formed.

I Wish Comcast Would Try Harder to Tell Me

...when their service is down. I'm sure there are all kinds of reasons they can't do it perfectly, but it would go a long way if they could even tell me "there may be problems in your area". I would think it would help them, too--fewer problem calls to answer.

There are so many ways to communicate now, even if the problem is that internet is down, it would be great to receive a text telling me that.

$40 MM Video Games

This article, which discusses how video game production budgets are going up faster than revenues, is another example of an economy that has grown dependent on doing things the expensive way.

Verizon Landline Alternative Will Fail

This is the wrong solution at the wrong time. At $30/month, and a big up-front cost, and no compelling features, the Verizon Hub is a loser. A winning proposition needs to conform to the spirt of the times, which would be--finding a cheaper way to deliver value. My exhibit in this category would be T-Mobile's @Home landline replacement, which gives you a feature rich, unlimited minutes and long distance solutions for a mere $10/month added to your cell bill.

Microsoft Retail Stores

Microsoft is copying Apple and opening up retail stores. My prediction: they will bomb. I just don't see what products MicroSoft has that are crying out for this distribution channel. (For the record, I didn't think retail stores for Apple would be successful, either.)

Japan's Banking Crisis

Only in 2003 did the government finally take the actions that helped lead to a recovery: forcing major banks to submit to merciless audits and declare bad debts; spending two trillion yen to effectively nationalize a major bank, wiping out its shareholders; and allowing weaker banks to fail.

Institutional Thinking

David Brooks: ...institutional thinking is eroding. Faith in all institutions, including charities, has declined precipitously over the past generation, not only in the U.S. but around the world. Lack of institutional awareness has bred cynicism and undermined habits of behavior. Bankers, for example, used to have a code that made them a bit stodgy and which held them up for ridicule in movies like "Mary Poppins." But the banker's code has eroded, and the result was not liberation but self-destruction.

SharePoint Checkout Model

In VSS, you check out to a folder. VSS remembers that folder. When you have a file checked out, you can manipulate it offline is as you see fit, all VSS knows is the filename. So as long as you check in a file with the same name, VSS is happy.

In SharePoint, the user is not involved in determining where the file is checked out to. Conceptually, it seems like you check the file out to an invisible "stream" (to use ClearCase terminology). One problem is that doesn't let you work offline. There are some good things about it, in that the user doesn't have to think about the check-out location of the doc. So it is less versatile, but simpler for the typical user.

But even that mental model seems broken. Because when you have a file checked out, a mere Save causes it to update the current copy with your work-in-process save. That seems very wrong. You should be able to save, but not have your updated version merged into the mainline stream until you are ready. At which time you would explicitly check it in. But that doesn't seem to be how SP works. As soon as you save, it seems to be checked in.

In fact, unless I am missing something (which seems probable) the only reason that SP needs a check out/check-in would seem to be to reserve the file for future use!

Thoughts on Health Care Reform

Although looking for government involvement/intervention/deep regulation to solve a problem is usually a last resort, the problem of ravenously increasing healthcare spending does not appear to be an ordinary problem. This has been considered a major problem for pretty much my entire adult life (20+ years). It only seems to have gotten worse. I am afraid, now, that Republicans/conservatives have completely ignored this situation too long, to their detriment.

However, I dearly hope we will not just dump more $ into system that we already agree consumes too much money and resources. Let's experiment with some kind of alternative, much leaner systems. Some ideas:

• Employ salaried doctors, not independent contractors, like the famous Mayo Clinic does
• Implement super, super aggressive management of prescriptions. It goes without saying that only generics should be used, where they are an option. In all cases, have a bias toward starting with the most cost-effective medicine, before escalating to the latest and greatest.
• Pass special tort reform, to eliminate defensive medicine.
• Consider aggressive, HMO-style gate-keeping. For instance, perhaps patients should always have to call the "nurse line" before coming to the doctor's office, to eliminate visits for routine colds, etc.
• Make aggressive use of the most cost-effective skill-set: don't use LPNs for stuff RNs can do, don't use Physician's Assistants where RNs can do, etc.
• Make aggressive use of wellness coaching--participation is not optional.
• Implement disciplined regionalization of procedures. Patients have to go to the approved, efficient facility in the region, not the one they might find most convenient.
• Keep some element of the first-dollar motivation that HSAs provide, even if it has to be on a sliding scale.
• Obviously we want to look at streamlined administrative options.
• Use expensive infrastructure 24x7.
• Take a very tough line on necessity of treatments. Just in my extended family, I know of a number of cases where prescribed treatment has been unnecessary or useless. This article that suggests most TMJ suffers might do best with no treatment is a good case study. Or back surgery!

Queuing Previewed Movies: Use Case for Movies on Demand

I love previews. When renting a good movie, Beth and I often see previews for 3-4 movies we would like to see. Depending on our levels of motivation and energy, we will respond in one of the following ways: 1) Grab the laptop, and put them on the Blockbuster online queue; 2) Grap a scrap of paper, jot them down, and hope we remember to put them in the queue; 3) Look at each other and say "we've got to remember that" and go on to the next preview.

So it is not hard to imagine that a well-designed, movies-on-demand system could make this work much more seamlessly. See the preview, decide you like it, click a button or two, and it is on your queue.

Unintended Consequence Possiblity: Flex-Time

Flex-time is a very nice improvement in the work life of the busy professional. I'm not talking about any type of shift work, just the practice, more often than not informal, of knowledge-worker employees generally having leeway to adjust their work hours plus/minus 1 hour or so from the norm. There are many reasons for flexing ones schedule, avoiding peak rush hour being chief among them. Most people love flex-time.

I find myself idly wondering, though, if anyone has looked into the unintended consequences of flex-time on reducing commuter mileage. If flex time were not an option, mass transit, carpooling and living closer to work all would be incrementally more desirable.

Lifespan of an Exercise Bike

My exercise bike broke down for the second time in as many months. Last time involved replacing an idler pulley--the hardest part about that was tracking down the replacement part on the internet. This time involves a broken-off bolt. To make matters much worse, I broke off a drill bit trying to drill it out. So I'm not sure what my next move will be.

The bike is six years old. My son was suggesting that maybe it was time to replace it. My first reaction was "you've got to be kidding, Seth, we need to have a talk about the consumer disposable culture!" But then I got to thinking...first of all, it was cheap, an incredible bargain. Surprisingly good, but certainly not club-quality.

Then I thought about how much use it has gotten, and what the expected usage is for a consumer exercise bike. In my cynical opinion, the expected usage is "hardly at all". Bike purchased, used a few hours for the first few weeks, intermittently for the next year, collects dust, sold very cheap at garage sale.

I, on the other hand, have ridden it regularly, and quite hard (8-9 on its max scale of 10), for the past 6 years. So you might say that I have ridden it 50% harder than expected, and 3X as frequently as expected. So you could argue that my 6 years of ownership is like 25 years of the average owner. A lifetime and then some, in other words.

All that being said, I am not ready to give up on it.

Facebook Feature: Professional vs Social

As noted, I am a newbie to Facebook. In general, it seems to me like a dangerous time waster. But I let it harvest my Gmail account for addresses, and then proceeded to invite the people it found. As I think about it, though, it seems to me that mixing professional and personal is just not such a desirable thing. I wonder if Facebook should have some built-in notion of professional contact vs personal contact.

Otherwise, I might just stick to LinkedIn for professional social networking. (That is what a contact of mine suggested when I friended him, which is what got me thinking about it.)

Coffee Linked to Lower Dementia Risk

Yet another health benefit for coffee drinkers.

Review ALL Roughing the Kicker Calls

In the AFC championship game tonight, at the end of Q2 there was a roughing the kicker call against Baltimore. The instant replay showed that it was pure acting by the Pittsburgh punter. The roughing kicker penalty--15 yards and change of possession--is HUGE. It doesn't happen that often, but it seems like when it does, close to half the time it is acting on the part of the kicker.

I think that they should be an instant-replay review from the booth every time there is a roughing the kicker call.

Facebook Feature: Friend Filtering

I don't spend a lot of time on Facebook, so maybe this feature exists and I have missed it. But when I look at someone's wall, 99% of what is on it means nothing to me. It would be much better if I could restrict what is displayed to posts from mutual friends.

Usage of "Props"

"Props" is apparently slang for "accord proper respect". Based on my own personal observations, it is gaining currency in middle-age, middle-class circles. I do not like it.

Be Your Own Advisor

Per the below article on the distorted behavior created by commissioned salespeople...--I'm not sure up-selling and mis-representing does backfire enough. That is why, especially with ultra-high-ticket products, like insurance, cars, your retirement--you just can't trust the seller. Just like you don't go into the grocery store and ask the meat department supervisor for their advice on how much meat and what kind you need, you should not rely on the insurance salesman to figure that out for you.

It is crazy to use anything but a fee-only Financial Planner.

Financial Bubbles Explained

Good Virginia Postrel article on financial bubbles, and experimental economics on the subject.

For the price to track the fundamental value, “everybody has to know that everybody knows that everybody is rational.” That’s rarely the case. Rather, “if you put people in asset markets, the first thing they do is not try to figure out the fundamental value. They try to buy low and sell high.” That speculation creates a bubble.

Why Are Online Surveys So Bad?

Normally I would never take an online survey. But I got one from Vanguard on the subject of "Help Us Understand Your Cash Needs". I am very favorably disposed towards Vanguard, and I was interested to see what they were after. So I said yes.

This launched the usual one-question-at-a-time "wizard". First question: your country. Boring. Click next. Second question: Sex. Click next. Third: Date of Birth. At that point, I bailed.

Why can't they give me all the questions (or a big chunk of them) on a single page? It would be SOOO much faster, and give me a better sense of how long the dang thing will take.

Why Are the Search Functions on Newspaper Web Sites So Poor?

(This was drafted on 12/07/08) In this morning's Washington Post I saw an article on a book called "Buyology", by one Martin Lindstrom. I wanted to read the article at my leisure, so I went online to look it up and email it to myself. I searched for "Buyology", figuring that would be sufficient. And I thought it was when I saw the results, it looked like I had a direct hit--the only result included the same photo that had accompanied the article. But when I clicked on it, it turned out that the link was only for the photo.

So then I searched the Washington Post site for "Buyology" and "Martin Lindstrom". This time I got a couple more results, including a review of his book from back in October, but still not today's featured article. My next step was Google News search: "buyology + washington + post". Bingo, first result.

I seem to experience similar behavior when I search within my local paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Except, if anything, it is worse. I haven't ever bothered to analyze what is going on, but many, many times I search for an article I saw in the last few days, and either can't find it, or it is buried very, very deep within a lot of goofy results.

There is a lot of speculation in the air about how endangered print newspapers are, and that the ones which will surivive are those that will find a good transition to the web. Given the difficulty they have executing the basics on the web, I have my doubts. Read Dave Winer's article "A Plan B for News".

Playing Football with the Flu

The Giants played their center, Justin Tuck, even though he had the flu. All through the game, it looked like he was struggling, and at the very end, he had come out. Maybe there is a detail I am missing, like the Giants backup center just broke his leg or something, but barring that, I just don't agree with playing a guy who has the flu. No matter how tough and how medicated, I don't think an "A" player fighting the flu is going to be effective as a healthy "C" player.

Mini-USB Charging Jacks

Pogue: Hail to every BlackBerry, cellphone, Bluetooth headset, Palm organizer, e-book reader, music player, cordless mouse and G.P.S. receiver that recharges through a mini-U.S.B. jack! No more big black power transformers — recharge from your laptop. It's the dawn of the universal, fully interchangeable power cord.

This is a great development, long overdue.

Power Stick

Wow, this sounds very cool. And MUCH cheaper than a second battery! The shuts off power when charging complete part is significant, too--I think that spending too much time on chargers contributes to the poor battery performance of modern devices.

POWER STICK Speaking of those hideous black wall warts [chargers]: you don't need them if you have a PowerStick ($65, powerstick.com). It's a tiny universal gadget charger, the size of a stick of Wrigley's, that draws its power from your laptop's U.S.B. jack.

It comes with nine short cables for the opposite end, made to fit the power jacks of common cellphone brands (LG, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Nokia), the iPod or iPhone and anything that gets its power from a mini- or micro-U.S.B. jack (see above).

First, you travel very, very light. (I haven't packed my cellphone adapter in a year.)

Second, the PowerStick does more than charge your gadget; it also stores a second charge, so that you'll be able to do another recharge in the field, without the laptop. (A cool "fuel gauge" lets you know how full it is.) Finally, a processor shuts off the power when the charging is complete, which saves electricity and, according to the company, prolongs your gadget's life.

Cell Phone Feature: Power Reserve Mode

It's great that cell phones can do so many things, but for most of us, emergency/short-notice communications device is by far the most important one. It's nice to play MP3's from my phone, but I don't want to run the battery to nothing doing that, and have it fail me at a crucial moment. So I would like to have a "reserve mode" feature, in which a cell phone pauses non-critical features, to warn you that battery life has dropped below 20%.

Noted that this may be the kind of feature that sounds good on paper, but adds more complexity to the platform than the feature is worth, if it causes flaky or unreliable behavior (like Windows Power Management has been known to).

NWA Flight Status Consistently Not Working?

My wife's flight was supposed to leave Cincy at 10:00 CST. Since 9:30 CST I have been checking the status on the NWA site, and there is no update beyond "scheduled". It is not 10:23. I was fed up enough, I hunted down another flight-status tracker, flighttracker, to see if it could do better. Sure enough, it told me the plane left at 9:15, and gave me an updated ETA.

This is the second time very recently something like this has happened. On her originally scheduled departure date, her destination, Albany, was due for a severe ice storm. We were 95% sure the flight would be canceled. But as of 3 hours before the flight, the NWA site still showed it as scheduled. Beth wound up calling NWA, and then they told her "oh yeah, that flight has been canceled".

Maybe this is just bad luck, but I am not impressed.

Teaching Pay Structure: Discourages Mid-Career Switchers

Okay, we already know that teacher pay is not great, and nobody goes into the field to get rich. However, there is an additional problem, that would really penalize anybody from switching into the field mid-career. That is the fact that raises are pretty much 100% tied to time served. If you become a teacher at the age of 40, there is no way to make up for 18 years of lost ground.

Whereas in fields where employers are free to pay for performance, someone who switches professions mid-career, if they along the learning curve fairly quickly, may quickly find themselves making a wage comparable to someone who has been in the field much longer.

Comment Reader Needed for Blogger

Few people read my blog, and slightly fewer than that comment on it. So I don't read comments regularly, though I do make it a point to catch up on them. And when I do, I always find myself scrolling through lots of posts, finding the few that have comments. Every time I do this, I find myself thinking "there must be some kind of comment-reader utility in Blogger".

This time I took a little time to search. I think I found the closest thing, which is the Moderate Comments option in settings.

What I am thinking of is a kind of view that would make it very quick to see only my posts that have comments, and to read those comments. I think the ideal would include:

1. A running list of posts, with the comments below.
   
2. The post itself would be presented in outline form (first couple of lines, then the rest collapsed, uncollapsible via a quick "Ajax-architecture" plus button.
3. Something similar for the posts, though the unit for them might be 6-10 lines.
4. A way to "Mark As Read".
   

Swiss-Army Cell Phone?

I have been interested in the long list of gadgets that the cell phone has subsumed. Here's an idea for another function to add to the cell phone: an LED flashlight. No, definitely not a major "game changer", but it could be kind of convenient, from time to time. Perhaps not worth the space and expense, but who knows, there might be use cases for it.

3/18/2010 Postscript: I have found this feature on a phone in the wild. Ironically, it is on the cheapest phone in our household--a $20 pay-as-you-go phone that my son got when he broke his real phone.

Even NYT Gets "Black Friday" Etymology Wrong

The venerable NYT committed this error:

Black Friday is named for the day when, historically, retailers moved into
the black, or became profitable for the year.

Although, I suppose, from the standpoint of a descriptive dictionary, this usage is steadily gaining ground versus the original usage (from Wikipedia):

The earliest uses of "Black Friday" come from or reference Philadelphia and refer to
the heavy traffic on that day, an implicit comparison to the extremely stressful
and chaotic experience of Black Tuesday (the 1929 stock-market crash). The earliest known reference to "Black Friday" (in this sense), found by Bonnie Taylor-Blake of the American Dialect Society, refers to Black Friday 1965 and makes the Philadelphia origin explicit:

JANUARY 1966 -- "Black Friday" is the name which the Philadelphia
Police Department has given to the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. It is not
a term of endearment to them. "Black Friday" officially opens the Christmas
shopping season in center city, and it usually brings massive traffic jams and
over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are mobbed from opening to
closing.[12]

Laptop Keyboards--No Two Alike

I am visiting my parents and using my mother's laptop. It is a full-sized machine, so the keyboard is not particularly cramped, but it is always a discomforting adjustment to use an unfamiliar laptop, since the layout of certain crucial keys always differs. Since I am a fairly aggressive user of standard Windows keyboard shortcuts (End, Home, Alt-Tab, Esc), this probably affects me a bit more than the average user.

Cranky Medical Residents

This article is on the general topic of how dangerous hospital physicians with bad tempers can be for the overall effectiveness of the system. However, the reference, quoted below, to a cranky, sleepy resident who couldn't be troubled, particularly interests me.

The American Medical Association frequently publishes articles calling attention to the health implications of people not getting enough sleep. But their industry is the absolutely, positively worst violator. What medical residents go through is insane.

It was the middle of the night, and Laura Silverthorn, a nurse at a hospital in Washington, knew her patient was in danger.

The boy had a shunt in his brain to drain fluid, but he vomiting and had an extreme headache, two signs that the shunt was blocked and fluid was building up. When she paged the on-call resident, who was asleep in the hospital, he told her not to worry.

After a second page, Ms. Silverthorn said, “he became arrogant and said, ‘You don’t know what to look for — you’re not a doctor.’ ”

He ignored her third page, and after another harrowing hour she called the attending physician at home. The child was rushed into surgery.

How much of a contributor is sleep deprivation?

When All Else Fails, Remember to Try Firmware Upgrade

I recently ordered a Jabra BT8010 wireless stereo bluetooth headset. I found my previous wireless headset, a Plantronics Voyager, to be slightly flaky in regard to establishing and maintaining its bluetooth connection. This one, however, has been terrible. The funny thing is, the music connection worked flawlessly, it was the phone connection that was hard to establish.

I got so frustrated, I put it in the drawer a couple of weeks ago. For some reason, I thought more about it today, and it occurred to me that I should consider a firmware upgrade. So I did the upgrade, and tried the phone again. Based on about 30 minutes worth of data, and holding my breath, but it seems to have cured the problem.

So that is a good reminder--when experiencing problems with electronics, don't forget to try the firmware upgrade. In fact, it is probably a good idea to try it sooner rather than later--you don't have to wait till all else fails!

Nokia xPress 5610--Failing on the Fundamentals

My new cell phone, a Nokia xPress 5610, looks pretty cool, since it is so small and slim.



Unfortunately, all the effort seems to have gone into cramming all the expected features of a contemporary phone, into this tiny package. What seems completely lost is useability as a phone! (Unless perhaps all Nokias work like this--this is my first Nokia in years--in which case it is solely the fault of bad design, and not attributable only to the super-small form factor).

The general theme is waaaay too many button presses to do anything. The best example is mute--a crucial feature in a cell phone. Should be 1 easy click to mute/un-mute, and it should be obvious, at a glance, whether the phone is muted. Not here--to activate mute you have to: 1) invoke the menu; 2) navigate to the Mute option; 3) click Mute.

There are many other examples. Another thing that should be very, very easy is putting the phone on vibrate. In my prior phones, you could do this by just holding the volume switch down. On the Nokia, it requires: 1) access the menu (or, if you set it up, the shortcut); 2) click the menu option for "profiles"; 3) that brings you to a choice of profiles, you have to navigate to the one you want; 4) click the one you want; 5) here is the worst part--after you click it, you have to select "activate".

The whole thing is bad, but even half-way software competent design would eliminate step #5--activate is what you access 99% of the time, so it is what you get when you do a full "click" on the profile. IF you want to do something else (that would be the obscure actions of Customize or Timed), well, that is what the soft buttons are for!

The phone is billed as a "music" phone, but it really doesn't do anything special in that regard, either. As far as I can tell, slapping 3 buttons--fast forward, pause, rewind--on the outside makes it a music phone. The only one of those that is particularly useful is the pause button, which could as easily just be replaced by the center click. And that seemingly uses up all available space for external buttons, so the other stuff that is usually activated by them--camera, voice recorder--is all buried within the standard menu. UPDATE: In fact, the buttons are more of a bug, because they are easily activated a la "butt calls"--an unforgivably, there is no option to lock the handset during music mode. That is just plain stupid.

This phone is like an uncomfortable, unreliable car that you buy just for its looks. I would not recommend it or pick it again (I knew I hadn't done enough research, but took a chance). It violates the basic commandment of design--above all else, do the essentials well.

Obama Appointees

Obama seems to have dispensed with the romantic and failed notion that you need inexperienced "fresh faces" to change things. After all, it was L.B.J. who passed the Civil Rights Act. Moreover, because he is so young, Obama is not bringing along an insular coterie of lifelong aides who depend upon him for their well-being.

Interesting point--my italics. Because the "fresh faces" concept doesn't seem to work so well, but then again, neither does the status quo.

Design Before Writing Requirements?

Not a bad article, I agree with a lot of it, this was the best part:

By nature domain understanding does not lead to specification. Understanding suggests design. A very important part of design is limits. When design is allowed to bubble up from understanding it’s easy to put the limit of the design into places that are logical for the domain. In contrast to design, requirement definition is limitless. The requirements gathering process typically goes on until someone says “I think we’ve got enough now”. That arbitrary stopping point becomes a design limit and hobbles further system development.
...
The solution is to write the requirements after the design is created so that the scope will be defined.

New Google Background

The Gmail sign-on page now has the sign-on dialog screen displayed translucently, with a pretty photo of a mountain scene in the background. It looks cool, but seems to me to go against the Google spirit of minimalist, sleek, clean, uncluttered, fast-loading pages. First impression--no value delivered.

Gadgets and Functions a Cell Phone Can Replace

These articles discuss the various gadgets that cell phones have replaced. I was thinking about that the other day. In fact, I was making a list of the things my next cell phone has to do.

Miscellaneous observations:

Better software is the way to accelerate this. Until the advent of the iPhone and Google Android, you get whatever is pre-installed. And that is usually very mediocre--the cell phone makers definitely have the checklist mentality for features: it just has to be adequate to get checked off as being present, there is no concept whatsoever of striving for excellence in design, a la Apple.

Key features I am looking for:
1. eReader platform. I think cell phones will kill off eReaders before they ever get going. A big-screen cell phone will be adequate for incidental reading. If you want more than that, why buy an eReader when you could have a Netbook, for the same or less money.
2. GPS. I may be hoping for too much--I'm not paying $10/month forever to have a cell phone GPS.
3. Good note-taking.
4. This is a far-off dream: universal remote control.

I think something that would increase useability would be a Launchy-style interface, to get a them quickly. Although maybe with the real-estate of a large-screen phone, you could have everything you use frequently on the desktop.

Note taking has got to get much better; I think the design goal would be that jotting a very short reminder note should not take more than 2x as long as on paper, including time to access the app. Also need good integration with voice notes. That would include develop a user-based voice to text profile that is persistent (doesn't have to be started anew with a new handset). Google would have a big advantage here, with its huge database from Goog 411.

A spin-off article I saw listed the gadgets that would not be replaced by cellphones, along with the reasoning, related to functional issues. Two of them listed were: 1) Calculator 2) Alarm Clock. Interestingly, one of my children uses her phone exclusively for each of these functions, even though she has recourse to the traditional, purpose-built alternatives.

So I think there are two main factors holding back wider usage of cell phones for some auxiliary functions, such as these. One is age, and the habits that accumulate with age. As Steve Jobs famously said, death will take care of that problem. The other is the design factor alluded to above.

I believe with thoughtful design, a modern cell phone can be made to work very well for almost any given function. For the design challenge of the snooze button on the alarm, for instance, the phone could automatically go into an "any key snooze" mode, similar to the any key answer feature. As a bonus, software applications running on a modern phone--which is very much a full-functioning hand-held cmputer--probably can offer features that don't exist on the old technology (such as switching between standard infix notation, and HP-style reverse Polish postfix notation for a calculator).

Neatness Counts at Kyocera and at Others in the 5S Club

I worked at Otis Elevator when 5S was religion. I am probably a hypocrite and short-sighted, but while I see its benefits in the factory, as an office worker, I say yuck, this seems like a joke that I am going to be more productive because I always put my stapler back in the same place.

Although the example of handling printer output does resonate with me. That is always a big problem. A simple, minimalist solution would be to have bins for each day. At the end of the day, the designated person puts all remaining output into the bin for that day. When the new week rolls around, anything still in the Monday bin gets tossed.

I note that the key difference is that example refers to a highly-shared area, not the personal space of a knowledge-worker.

Stupid Stuff: When Was that Picture Taken?

When looking at photo files in Windows File Manager, there are a slew of additional attributes (columns) that you can add, if you want to. Why in the world would M$ not have made "Date Picture Taken" (not the same as file Created date) one of those defaults??

SharePoint should work more like Google Docs

One big problem with SharePoint is that the permissions have to be provided at a macro level, in advance, by the SharePoint admin. In cross-functional projects at large companies, this makes it inconvenient to use SharePoint for the ad-hoc workgroups that often get pulled together in big companies. So what happens?--business as usual, i.e., passing around email versions, getting mixed up as to what is current, and generally clogging the Exchange server with large attachments.

Google docs works so much better. You create a document, and then invite people to collaborate. You can set rules that allow or disallow your invitees from inviting others.

Free Software

This article talks about the uptick in for-profit business using free software, instead of the entrenched, default option of MS-Office. I'm all for anything that breaks the M$ tax. I must say, though, that the way Excel is often used as a convenient, ad-hoc data-exchange format is going to be hard to replace with Google spreadsheets.

Online Advertising

Dave Winer says online advertising is soon to be dead (whatever dead means). I generally wish Google well, but I have long believed that oneline advertising is over-rated.

One Fell Swoop

A curious phrase. Nice explanation here.

Detroit

Thomas Friedman:

The blame for this travesty not only belongs to the auto executives, but must be shared equally with the entire Michigan delegation in the House and Senate, virtually all of whom, year after year, voted however the Detroit automakers and unions instructed them to vote. That shielded General Motors, Ford and Chrysler from environmental concerns, mileage concerns and the full impact of global competition that could have forced Detroit to adapt long ago.... Giving G.M. a blank check — which the company and the United Auto Workers union badly want, and which Washington will be tempted to grant — would be an enormous mistake.

Normally I am against "white-knight thinking", but I have to say, Robert X. Cringely's suggestion is intriguing:

Somebody ought to call Steve Jobs, who doesn't need to be bribed to do innovation, and ask him if he'd like to do national service and run a car company for a year. I'd bet it wouldn't take him much longer than that to come up with the G.M. iCar.

Google Flu-Tracking

Wow, clever:

Google Uses Searches to Track Flu's Spread

By MIGUEL HELFT 46 minutes ago

Google is tracking the ebb and flow of Web queries like "flu symptoms" or "muscle aches" in an effort to identify outbreaks.

Sprint Hemorrhaging Customers

Sprint Nextel Lost 1.3 Million Customers in Quarter. My family of 5 was among them.

How Phonebooks treat SIM cards

I really don't understand. Having replaced a couple of phones under warranty, the SIM card is really the core of "your" phone, much more than the rest of the handset. So why the heck is the default to store contacts on the phone, not on the SIM card? You can move them, but as far as I can tell, only one at a time. Makes zero sense to me.

Postscript: this thread gives some clues. It seems that you need the contacts on the handset to have pictures or ringtones associated with the contact. Okay, that is presumably a hardware constraint, but it still strikes me as exposing WAAAYY too much implementation to the user. Why not just duplicate the contact in both places, if the user chooses to associate a ringtone to it? Why make them have to think about this stuff?

What Does the Recession Really Mean?

Here is what I wonder about...on a vast, global scale, what does a recession and economic crisis really mean? I think I have a decent grasp of capitalist economics 101. I understand that if a person, or demographic, or maybe even an entire country, has over-consumed and under-saved, they will have failed to accumulate the capital necessary to invest in a future. I get that, for the scope of an "open system".

But in scientific terms, the global economy is a closed system. There is no external creditor to borrow from. So I can't quite get my puny mind around what the implications are on a global scale. Why does there have to be a crash? Why can't we all just more or less keep doing what we have been doing?

I mean, I could understand a global economic crunch caused by a non-economic event, like war, or by a critical resource shortage. That I get. But I don't really, deep down, understand what is different, except that there is a crisis of confidence. Is it that simple? That could do it--if one day we all wake up, and decide to not spend a dime, that would cause the gears of commerce to grind to a halt. Paul Krugman alluded to that in his "Consumers Capitulate" column.

Or is the explanation more subtle? Have we felt flush for years, and been too willing to spend money on frivolities, such as meals out or manicures, for example? And now, as we come to realize that our net worth's aren't what we thought, and our incomes aren't going up like we thought they would, are we generating an economic dislocation, by suddenly shifting our consumption preferences? So we have too many restaurants and cosmetologists, and too few appliance repairmen (to keep our old appliances going, instead of buying new ones)?

Consumers Capitulate

Krugman: To appreciate the significance of these numbers, you need to know that American consumers almost never cut spending. ..So these data are basically telling us what happened before confidence collapsed after the fall of Lehman Brothers in mid-September, not to mention before the Dow plunged below 10,000. Nor do the data show the full effects of the sharp cutback in the availability of consumer credit, which is still under way. So this looks like the beginning of a very big change in consumer behavior. And it couldn't have come at a worse time.

It always does come at the worst time.

Tapping 401k for Mortgage Payments

There have been bills introduced to allow distressed homeowners to tap their 401k's, without penalty, for mortgage payments. I think this is generally a bad idea, from a social-policy standpoint. Although it is wrenching for a family to lose their house, they can recover. Displaced homeowners will find somewhere else to live--maybe an apartment, maybe renting a house in the same neighborhood, maybe even renting their own house. I don't want to minimize what a blow this would be, but from society's point of view, these are acceptable outcomes.

Whereas if people raid their 401k's in order to make mortgage payments, they are going to arrive at retirement, 20 or 30 years down the road, with nothing. And that is a social problem. So better to lose the house and downsize now, than be without a living in retirement.

Modern-Day Pirates

I have read a lot recently about modern-day pirates, particularly off the cost of Somalia. Here's what I don't understand--why can't large shippers use technology to foil them? Just like banks have panic buttons by every teller, a ship could have multiple panic buttons, that wirelessly set off a dozen hidden transponders.

Counting Calories Is Fundamental

For the last few decades, the most popular diets were complex formulas that promised abundant eating with just the right combinations of fat, protein and carbohydrates. Now those regimens are starting to look like exotic mortgages and other risky financing instruments. And just like a reliable savings account, good old calorie counting is coming back into fashion.

Yep, this seems pretty reasonable. There are some secondary considerations to what kind of calories you consume--more calories are used turning protein into stored fat than turning fat into stored fat--but the primary factor is just the number of calories.

I take the same view of calories in relation to exercise. I have always believed, for those interested in weight-control and general conditioning, that total number of calories was probably the most important factor. (Training for finely-tuned competitive althletes, seeking to maximize performance, may have more subtleties.) Likewise, in terms of fitness and especially weight-loss benefits, I think that total calories burned is more important than which zone you are in, or what your heart-rate is. (Although some of the literature on interval-training does make it sound "magical".)

Cell Phone Feature: FInd Me

Problem
Particularly as cell phones get smaller and smaller, they can get mis-placed. The key to finding them is to realize it soon after they have been lost, so you can call it and listen for the ring. But if Murphy's Law is alive and well, you will have mis-placed your cell phone some time when it is in silent mode.

Proposed Features
Find Me
So, the proposed cell phone feature is a password-enabled Find Me mode. You call your phone, and when it answers by going to voice mail, you have the chance to "enter 9, for Find Me option", followed by your 4-digit PIN. This causes the phone to switch to its loudest ringing mode.

Wake Up and Find Me
And what if the phone is not merely silenced, but is turned off? Well, contemporary cell phones have internal functions even when powered off, so that their alarm clock function works relaiably. So I can envision a more elaborate feature that would work this way:

1. When powered off, the cell phone wakes itself up every 12 hours.
2. When it wakes up, it "polls" the voice mail system.
3. If it finds a "special" voice mail, in which the user activated the Find Me feature, it keeps itself awake but silenced, and will now respond to the Find Me feature described above.

Asessment
As I think about it, this second version adds a lot of complexity, and poses some issues for environments in which cell phones must be turned completely powered off (airplanes and medical equipment are the two I am aware of). So I guess there would have to be an override option on the phone, that you set before turning it off. And therein lies mounting complexity--the average phone user will not be aware of the Find Me feature, and even less aware of the need to override in sensitive settings. So perhaps this part of the feature can be filed under the category of "cool idea in theory, but too many complications in practice".

Regarding the basic Find Me feature, I think there are fewer usage-oriented complications. I'm not a cell phone systems engineer, but I am pretty sure that the complicating factor for this feature is creating the ability for voice mail to call back into the handset functionality. I don't think it is anything that is impossible to solve, but I don't think it is how cell phones work. Maybe an opportunity for the gPhone/Android?

Working Class

Politicians and commentators frequently make references to "working class (Americans)", but in my opinion, working class is a meaningless term in modern America. (1)

Although Wikipedia offers a conflicting definition, I take "working-class" to mean someone who is not either independently wealthy (a member of the aristocracy), nor a member of elite, independent professions (traditionally medicine, law or the clergy), nor an business owner. In other words, somebody who has to show up, day in and day out, to earn a paycheck. That could describe a factory worker, but it could also describe a well-paid professional. (The Japanese term, salaryman, neatly captures the idea as related to professionals.)

Anyway, what got me thinking about this subject enough to finally sit down and write about it was this quote I came across:

"A stunning statistic is that unlike in past epochs, the higher up the income ladder you go, the more hours you work," said Dalton Conley, a sociology professorat New York University.

The key point being: working, in the sense of trading one's time for income, is highly correlated to economic status.

_________

(1) In fact, it is probably an irrelevant term for almost all parts of America, for all times, except maybe plantation owners in the pre-bellum South.

Risk Issue Problem

In software development, people tend to use the following definitions:

Issue: something that will cause complications or setbacks for the project.

Risk: something that has the potential to cause complications or setbacks for the project, if it occurs; and there is no plan to actively prevent it.

Under these definitions, an Issue is more severe than a Risk.

To me, that is backward:

Risk: something that has the potential to cause complications or setbacks for the project, if it occurs; and there is no ability to completely be sure of preventing it.

Issue: a complicating detail to attend to. Something intrinsically manageable, however, so that as long as it is addressed as planned, there will be no significant negative consequences to the project.

Problem: a complicating detail which is not routine, and presents a significant challenge to overcome. This seems to be what most people want to call an "issue".

It seems that the general lingusitic trend of replacing the word "problem" with "issue" has crept into software development.

What Will Be the Last Major Sports Venue NOT To Have Naming Rights?

Yankee Stadium is gone, Shea Stadium is going...nobody wants to pay for naming rights to something really old, with a really well-established name that people might keep using, instead of adopting the new name (BigCo Park, Amalgamated Products FieldHouse, etc). They want to slap their names on shiny, new facilities. Maybe Lambeau field will be the last?

Corporate and Other Discounts on Cell Phones

First rule of getting a cell phone plan--make sure to ask for a corporate discount. Depending on which company you are affiliated with, that will be between 10-20%, off the top. Just for asking--not insignificant.

On top of that, if you drive a hard bargain, you can do much better than store prices. What I did, when switching to T-Mobile for a family of 5, was shop Amazon for our phones. Amazon has amazing, post-rebate prices, but there are a few catches. First catch is not too surprising--2-year service contract, just like you would get at the company store (though even more restrictive in details). Second catch--you have to mail in the rebate in a window--after 60 days, before 120 days of service. That is a big gotcha--everybody knows rebates are dicey at best, but having to remember to send it in after 60 days ups the ante. Third catch--they don't have a way to give you the corporate discount. To get that, you will have to ask after you sign up. I think that works, but it's not the best position to be in, so if you go that route, verify in advance that you will be able to get the discount (and nail down the % off) after the fact.

Those are complications, not automatic showstoppers--the Amazon phone prices are jaw-droppingly cheaper, especially for high-end phones (and it really adds up when buying 5 new phones). What I did, though, was to call T-Mobile to compare. I didn't bother with the store, I went to the business division. They couldn't quite match Amazon's phone prices, but they came close, with less of it in the form of rebates. The clincher, though, was that they offered a one-year contract. I was really kind of stunned by that--everybody knows to get the big discounts on phones, you have to sign up for 2 years. And we were getting the discounts on 5 phones.

1 year is terriffic. That just opens up your options. Either to switch carriers, if either dissatisfied, or just seeking a better deal.

We still haven't really had to turn on the heat

(though I did for 1 hour yesterday morning, just to be generous), but the dreaded first appearance of snow in the forecast has appeared. Before anyone gets too excited, it is for the slightest flurries, but still, it is an unwelcome milestone.

Why I Probably Will Never Be An Apple Customer

This article helps explain why I will never be an Apple customer, unless I win the lottery (which I don't play):

Apple has had great success in part because it has convinced customers to turn away from a $1,000 Windows laptop and to buy its $1,600 laptop instead for its stunning displays and ease of use.

$1000? $1600?! You've got to be kidding--$500 is more than I want to spend on a home laptop.

I briefly thought about a Mac. I've heard rave reviews, including "runs Windows better than Windows". I could see paying, oh, say a 30% premium for the Apple experience. But 100-150% premium? I don't think so. Same thing with the iPod--they are double what competitive MP3 players cost. I held out from buying one, and now am using my new cell phone. Definitely not nearly as slick, but one device meets both needs, and anyway, I'm a light user.

The Problem of Government Meddling

Many people say the same about Healthcare and College Tuition (government involvement led to exorbitant, destructive increases in cost).

Many believe that wild greed and market failure led us into this sorry mess. According to that narrative, investors in search of higher yields bought novel securities that bundled loans made to high-risk borrowers. Banks issued these loans because they could sell them to hungry investors. It was a giant Ponzi scheme that only worked as long as housing prices were on the rise. But housing prices were the result of a speculative mania. Once the bubble burst, too many borrowers had negative equity, and the system collapsed.

Mild Ride

Parental controls for cars--when my kids were born 14 years ago, I figured something like this would be available by the time they started driving (probably still too late for us, since will only be in new cars, and I don't see one of those in the immediate future...)

MyKey allows parents to limit teenage drivers to a top speed of 80 miles per hour, cap the volume on the car stereo, demand seat belt use and encourage other safe-driving habits.

also highlighted MyKey’s low-fuel warning, which lights up earlier than normal. He called it “a little thing for Mom and Dad.”

This is a great idea. I think 60 mph would be a good upper limit. Maybe 50, if you could be sure your child wasn't going to need to go on the highway.

Niche PC Ideas

In general, the Windows PC is ultra-commoditized. It is very hard to do anything to earn a higher margin. My ideas for carving out a niche would be:

• Crapware (aka, Trialware)-free (because right now Best Buy is getting some people to pay an extra $75 for this)
  
• Built-in backup (software, but also a mirrored hard drive)
• One or two very modest design and engineering touches--such as the Mac-style magnetic power cord
• The crowning glory would be easy-to-use virtual machines (VMWare), so that you could always roll back to a pristine install

Paying Best Buy to "Optimize" Your Computer

The excellent price I got from Best Buy on our new laptop was the happy part. During the brief sales process, I was prepared for the sales guy to try to upsell me. I politely declined the offer to install anti-virus software for me. But when he asked me if I wanted them to optimize remove the pre-installed crapware for me, it was almost too much. He literally said "we will remove all the junk they pre-install on it"!

I know I am not the first person to make this observation, but how ridiculous is that--I'm supposed to pay them to remove the junk that comes on the product they sell to me?! As I've said before, it just completely undermines the user experience, unlike when you buy Apple. Needless to say, I curtly dismissed this pitch.

I think a big part of the problem is that margins are so thin in the PC hardware business, that the OEMs are just desperate for incremental revenue. It's almost like spam--even if only one person in 500 upgrades their pre-installed trialware to the payeware version, the comission on the pre-install still represents a desperately needed revenue stream for the OEMs.

I still say that a better user experience is an opportunity for a niche player in the Windows PC market.


PS What did surprise me was that the salesman never bothered to pitch two of the usual favorites--expensive cables and extended warranties. I guess my profile--cheapest laptop in the store, no time of day for the virus protection--told him I was a lost cause.

More Mortgage Problems

I am afraid I agree with this article, that lays out a reason why the mortgage crisis will continue unabated:

It seems that the majority of investors, economists, and governmental leaders are overlooking a very important right hand side of this mortgage rate reset graph. The subprime loan reset period (represented by the green bars) may be nearing the end, but the lightly-shaded yellow bars represent $500 billion worth of option-ARM loans expected to reset from mid 2009 through 2012.

I also think the author is overlooking another factor, which is that 5/1 and 7/1 ARMs for non-subprime borrowers will also be re-setting in the next few years. The results may not be quite as catastrophic, but there will still be a lot of rate jumps, particularly if prevailing rates go up between now and then.

Buy Cheap When It Comes to Laptops

I just bought a laptop at Best Buy. My philosophy of computers, especially laptops, is--buy the cheapest one that meets your basic requirements. The expected life of a laptop, before it is lost/stolen/broken/obsolete, is somewhere under 3 years. I used to be anti-laptop, for casual home use where portability is merely nice, not essential, because the laptop cost substantially more, carried much higher risk of breakage, and was prohibitive to repair. However, laptop prices have plummeted so much, that I have changed my view. Just plan to buy cheap and replace as needed.

On that score, I think I did pretty well. I went in, looking for the $499 Dell Inspiron that was advertised. While I was waiting for them to fetch me that, though, I saw an almost-equivalent Acer, clearance-priced for $375. That is about as low as I can possibly imagine getting a Windows laptop; or, for that matter, any PC. And it even came with Vista Home Premium. I believe Micro$oft has given up on trying to extract a premium for VHP over Vista Home Basic--even the very cheapest laptops now come with VHP.

I Don't Like Door-to-Door Campaiging

I am not a fan of door-to-door campaigning, unless the person appearing on my doorstep is the candidate herself. Otherwise, what is it really about? The visit serves no truly useful purpose, other than trying to increase the popularity of their candidate. It is not much different, in spirit, than junior high school student student council campaign.

As was observed in the early days of email spam--unsolicited, unwelcome email is still spam, even when it comes from a charitable organization.

A great Steve Yegge article screed on the importance of touch-typing, and the fact that it is never too late to learn.

On The Fly Price Comparison

two companies showed off their Android applications. Big in Japan showed ShopSavvy, a neat tool that scans a bar code and then searches the web and local stores for the same item

That's a pretty good idea. I have thought something like that would be useful when considering a purchase. If you aren't tuned in to the price point for an item you are considering purchasing (probably as an impulse), you can very quickly get a readout on what is a good price. Of course, as with so many things, the business model seems like a great big question mark.

Extend Toner Life

It is outrageous that the printer manufacturers are doing this to us! From Slate:

To find out, I did what I normally do when I'm trying to save $60: I Googled. Eventually I came upon a note on FixYourOwnPrinter.com posted by a fellow calling himself OppressedPrinterUser. This guy had also suspected that his Brother was lying to him, and he'd discovered a way to force it to fess up. Brother's toner cartridges have a sensor built into them; OppressedPrinterUser found that covering the sensor with a small piece of dark electrical tape tricked the printer into thinking he'd installed a new cartridge. I followed his instructions, and my printer began to work. At least eight months have passed. I've printed hundreds of pages since, and the text still hasn't begun to fade. On FixYourOwnPrinter.com, many Brother owners have written in to thank OppressedPrinterUser for his hack. One guy says that after covering the sensor, he printed 1,800 more pages before his toner finally ran out.

Proffesionals Marrying Professionals

John Derbyshire:

our cognitive elites are increasingly inbred. Doctors used to marry nurses, professors used to marry their secretaries, business moguls used to marry starlets. Now doctors marry doctors, professors professors, moguls moguls, lawyers lawyers, etc. Those “modest origins” of our meritocratic elites are less modest by the year. We might be drifting towards a caste system, except that meritocracy requires some openness, some vacuuming-up of high-I.Q. outliers from the lower classes, some dumping of low-I.Q. duffers from the elites.

Product Design Idea: Improving the Grocery Cart

When I go grocery shopping for our hungry family of four, the cart fills up. I mean, really fills up. Although I start out putting the crushable stuff on one side, and the heavy stuff on the other, as the cart fills up, it all jumbles together, and some stuff at the bottom inevitably gets squashed.

A nice, pull-up divider would be a great solution. Keep the heavy nicely segregated from the soft stuff.

Observation on Test-Driven Development

With TDD, I think probably half the benefit is the process benefit of wrapping your mind around the problem and thinking through the test cases. As opposed to the tangible benefit of having the test cases in hand, and the test automation developed (which I think also is significant).

Launchy for Apps

A friend told me about Launchy. You just type a few letters, and it pulls up the apps whose name matches: W-O-R for MS Word, P-H for Photoshop, etc. That's great. I have wanted the same thing for Recently Used Files, for years.

I guess Vista, like the Mac, has this built in. About time. I also think it is an example of classic Microsoft. No improvements, the same festering shortcomings live on for years, until a competitor lights a fire under them.

Reagan's Impression on An Apparatchik

Aleksandrov was an experienced functionary of high rank who had met plenty of Americans in the course of his work. But years after he had seen President Ronald Reagan for the first time he still trembled at the impression. It was not Reagan's words or policies that grabbed Aleksandrov's attention but his manners. The day in question called for an umbrella. As the president and his wife walked in the open air, the president held one aloft to shelter her from the rain. Aleksandrov recalled his own astonishment. Soviet political wives were meant to avoid the limelight; the task of sheltering them was supposed to be discharged by some nearby lackey. For Aleksandrov, Reagan's behavior was chivalrous in the extreme—an example of an ease of social conduct that Aleksandrov was to witness on several other occasions as he became acquainted with the United States.

Elites

David Brooks: In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation's founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe in a separate class of professional executives. They wanted rough and rooted people like Palin. I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn't just lived through the last eight years.

Social Security ROI

My father-in-law mentioned that he had a number of acquaintances who had unreported incomes for years, and now were suffering because they had reduced Social Security earnings. In theory, those tax cheats would have still come out ahead, had they just had the discipline and foresight to set aside some of their undeclared income for retirement. Of course, that is theory, it often doesn't work that way in messy human practice.

That got me thinking, though. 15 years ago I read that people currently retiring were, on average, getting the equivalent of a 30% return on their Social Security witholding, whereas people just entering the work force could expect a return of between -3% to 0%. 30% is quite a rate of return. Would those people seen a large NPV had they declared all their income, and payed into Social Security, and reaped that 30% rate of return? I'm too lazy to work the math, but it seems like they probably would have.

Chat and other features in Webex

We use Webex a lot at work (daily). The chat feature--which nobody ever seems to use anyway--is dangerously designed, I think. As I have found in teleconference-intensive environments, there is often a fair amount of back-channel conversation ("they are exaggerating the impact of the problem...", "...that's another missed commitment...", etc.). It is natural to use some form of chat for that. Typically, from what I see, the vehicle is instant messaging.

Imagine trying to do that instead through Webex. The default in Webex is to send a message to ALL meeting attendees. WAAAY to easy to open virtual mouth and insert virtual foot. Ouch!

T-Mobile Faves and Conference Call

After 10 years with Sprint wireless, we switched to T-Mobile. A big part of the draw, besides the general appeal of being a new customer and showered with free phones, was the unique Faves program. That lets you select 5 numbers which you get unlimited calling minutes for. They can be almost any domestic number, even T-Mobile competitors.

That had 2 big benefits. One, it let me cut back from 2000 to 1000 minutes, saving $30/month. Two, I can make my company's universal conference call number a fave. I spend about half my day, at least, on calls, and I work from home 2 days/week, so that is a huge convenience. It also should allow me to drop by second line, another $10 saving.

Donate To This Political Ad

Dave Winer with yet another creative idea:

...put a Donate button on the ad. If I give you $100 you commit to using that money to run this ad.

Value-Added Packaging

I am a big proponent of "value-added packaging". Some recent examples I have come across in my personal, consumer life:

Coleman "wrap and roll" air mattress. This is the third air mattress we have purchased, but the first with this nifty little feature. It is as simple, and low-cost, as could be, but makes the job of storing the air mattress so much tidier. Great example of highly economical value-added packaging. (I think Coleman in general has a lot of VAP.)


MS Mouse 7000 snap-in bluetooth adapter. The bluetooth adapter, an easily mis-placed item, neatly stores in a cavity on the underside of the mouse.

LG Decoy Phone with Built-In Wireless Headset. I don't own this one, but as soon as I read about it I recognized a clear example of VAP driving product differentiation. In fact, I had a very similar idea, years ago, for a built in wired headset, with retractable cord.

Google Browser Incognito Feature

This article reports Google is going to launch their own browser, Chrome. One ground-breaking feature if Incognito: " a special privacy mode that lets users create an 'incognito' window where "nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer." This is a read-only feature with access to one's bookmarks of favorite sites."

Very clever. They should also implement an option for anonymous browsing.