June 29, 2007
Exercise deficiency
ARGH!!! Since when did the internet become the sole domain of the lazy-ass car driver?
I'm trying to get a simple route map for a short walk across Brussels, and all the mapping sites I try insist on diverting me via stupid one-way systems. I'm ON FOOT, damnit. Where's the "no thanks, I'd like to walk" option?
Google Maps lets you redefine your route by dragging the map line, but freaks out when it hits one way systems.
Yahoo! Maps! Is! Fixed! Only! For! Cars!
Maporama (more like Adorama) is similarly useless.
Mapquest keeps prompting me with an alternate destination, and failing to load the subsequent map page.
Multimap: Driving, Quickest, Shortest, Walking .... you're my hero! Sadly, Multimap doesn't rate minor roads as suitable for walking on, so looks like I'll still need to take a printed map and a brain. Oh well ...
Technorati Tags: cars, computing, critique, gis, maps
Forget about it
I just saw in my news aggregator that Joost has the entire season one of transformers now available. Now that's what I call compelling content - excellent! (What can I say? I'm a geek, so sue me.) So I rushed to fire up the Joost application, thrilled at the prospect of returning to 1984 and reliving that bit of my childhood.
But sadly, for some strange reason, the Joost app wasn't running, it just sat there in the menu bar looking forlorn, with no shiny full-screen TV-on-my-desktop experience. Suspecting a problem with the beta I was using, I went and grabbed the latest, installed it, and fired it up.
And then I saw the screen I dread every time I try to use Joost:
Sign in to Joost
Joost Name:
Joost Password:
... and of course the name/password fields are blank. Why's this bad?
I can never predict when I'll be asked for my Joost name and password. I think they get zapped every time I upgrade, but I'm not sure. And we've already been bumped from original registration details to a new set of "friendly" names. Because I have to enter the details infrequently, they don't stick in my memory. Secrets to increased adoption 101: don't throw arbitrary barriers in front of your users.
Secondly, almost EVERY OTHER APPLICATION on my laptop is well-behaved enough to store login details in the Mac OS X keychain, so I don't need to remember them. Even Firefox, which fails to integrate with the keychain, is good enough to provide it's own implementation. So why not Joost?
Dear Joost: you are not a unique and lovely wallflower so precious that I can consign extra special space in my memory to remembering your login details above all others. So please store them sensibly and stop asking me for them at random intervals, mmm k?
Update: finally remembered the username and password. Fired up Joost, connected, spent some time looking for Transformers. They blogged about it, it must be here! Nope, no luck. Took another look at the website:
Riiiight.
Technorati Tags: computing, critique, joost, tv
June 28, 2007
Blast from the past
In my inbox, yesterday:
D I T H E R A T I
see the digerati dither, daily
AWAKE AND STING
"We're baaaaaack!"
Ditherati editor Owen Thomas, 25 June 2007
http://www.ditherati.com/
Hurrah!
Technorati Tags: computing, culture
June 27, 2007
June 26, 2007
Dancing like your dad
Oh dear oh dear oh dear ... watching BBC Breakfast News just now, they had Wayne Hemmingway on, talking about grotesque listed buildings. Ok so far. But then he talked about seeing enthusiast photos of listed buildings on websites like Flickr - pronouncing it "Flick-arghhhhh". Photo journalism meets Talk-Like-A-Pirate? Wayne's down with the kids and has got the lingo, alright. Oh, how I chuckled. Book.
Technorati Tags: computing, flickr, tv
June 25, 2007
Nokia N95 day two
Some evil people are placing bets on how quickly I'll start complaining about Vodafone, so I'm not going to do that. No, instead I'm going to complain about the N95 ;-)
First up: I've discovered a bug (though I'm not the first to notice it). If you have a repeating alarm set, after the alarm has gone off once, the multimedia key stops working. Great!
Actually, that's the only complaint so far. I've just discovered the camera has autofocus, which is cool.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out what the best mobile VOIP solution is. Many of these would also work on the N80, too.
Truphone setup was by sending a text message to a number, get a text back with a url, visit the url and agree to the T&C, and first thing they do is give me a truphone number 447624004374 and a password to note down before downloading the app. Then the app tells me it can only be installed on the phone memory (C drive .. how quaint). I'm going to give that a miss for now.
Fring promises Skype, Google Talk, MSN and Twitter on the mobile (see el Reg for details). No such stupid installation location restrictions, and simple setup. Sadly it doesn't integrate with the N95's address book though, and with an extensive list of contacts it's a little unwieldy. But within a couple of minutes of installation I'd made a test VOIP call to their echo service, which worked.
I left Fring running for a while, and noticed the phone battery compartment beginning to warm up, and the battery charge dropping at an alarming rate. I guess this is because I turned off WiFi power-saving.
Oh, and Vodafone Live! is still Vodafone Dead! - that's 48 hours and counting - so still haven't been able to try out streaming TV. But YouTube's mobile site works just fine, even though it has to fire up standalone RealPlayer rather than playing clips directly in pages. Quality is acceptable, it could provide a useful distraction whilst stuck at airports and on trains etc.
June 24, 2007
June 23, 2007
links for 2007-06-23
-
isync support for nokia phones, from nokia
-
guide to automated isync between phone and laptop
Nokia N95 first impressions
I'm switching to a mobile phone network that actually has some coverage (Vodafone), and as part of the deal I've been forced (forced!) to get a Nokia N95 to replace my Orange Nokia N80. Keeping up the tradition set by my Nokia N80 review, here's a brief review of the new phone.
First impressions
- Good grief the screen is huge!
- Good grief microSD cards are small!
- The back of the phone feels rubbery/velvety, but in a good way.
- The plum colour on the back is delicious-looking.
- A shutter to protect the camera lens - at last!
- Excellent two-way sliding action, with a satisfying spring to it.
- Butt-ugly voda logos everywhere *sigh*
- Standard headphone jack, but that also supports video out. Very cool.
- It's lighter than the n80, even though it's slightly wider. More briquette than brick. My pockets thank you, Nokia.
- No more annoying n80 blinkenlights.
- The 'C' key is annoyingly close to the 'end call' key.
- Stereo sound! Actually quite acceptable volume and quality from the internal speakers, too.
- The screen is yummy.
- The new Clock application supports multiple alarms (hurray!) and time zones (hurray!).
- Turning the phone sideways gives a great widescreen-style effect. The welcome vid with Moby shows the phone off well.
Gripes
Not all of the apps seem to support wifi for connection (radio) - I don't want to start using GPRS/3G connectivity yet (and I can't, since my true SIM won't work until the end of the week), so I can't try everything.
Fnding music: I used Nokia Media Transfer to send music to my phone, but couldn't see it in the gallery or the music player. had to go into Music Player -> Options -> Refresh Music Library before it found the added tracks. This is the sort of mind-numbingly stupid task that I'd expect the iPhone to get right first time.
A lot of the services seem to be tied in to Vodafone Live!, which is unfortunate since the site has been down for the last 18 hours. And not just down as in "sorry, we're experiencing technical difficulties, please try again later", but down as in "server stopped responding". Doesn't anyone use the httpd proxy error page for 99.999% uptime trick any more? I can see I'm going to enjoy being back on Vodafone!
Nokia advertise the N95 as "it's what computers have become". Well, if that's the case, we can look forward to a bright future:
- Time to first crash: 3 hours (downloading voice commands for the GPS mapping application caused a reset).
- Time to second crash: 2 hours (pairing with bluetooth headset, making test phone call). Had to remove the battery, it crashed so hard.
- Time to third crash: 1.5 hours (installing shozu and activating it caused a reset).
No crashes since, possibly as a result of the WiFi dropout fix I tried.
It will be interesting to see how well I get on with the phone once my number has been ported and I can start using it for real. It's annoying that the mobile networks lock the phones to their network, so I can't just pop my Orange SIM card into the phone for a week until the number porting completes. Handcuffs and stupid restrictions are not a great first experience for customers!
Overall, my first impressions are mostly positive. Let's see how I get on with the phone over the next few months ...
Technorati Tags: computing, gis, gps, mobile, software, vodafone
June 22, 2007
Websites that suck: DVLA
I got a letter at the start of the month from the DVLA, reminding me to renew my car tax and inviting me to do so online. Great stuff, I can get it out of the way and not worry about it.
I logged on to the site, typed in the cumbersome 16 digit number, but was told there was a problem. On re-reading the letter the DVLA sent, I noticed this:
The earliest date you can apply is on or after the 15th day of the month in which your existing licence expires
Great, so the error I'm getting was because I'm too early. Why not just tell me that? And why on earth can they not process the application, if they've got all the data required to send out the reminder letter in the first place? And why a 16 digit number - wouldn't a shorter number in conjunction with the registration number do the trick?
So I remembered to go back to the site today, and started to fill out the form. I'm not sure what browser they were designing for, but it's not Safari. None of the textareas are large enough to view the number of digits required - for example the CVC 3 digit code should be entered into a text box one character wide. Also, on every page is a dire message about using standard browser features:
The Back button on the browser cannot be used during a transaction. If the Back button was used the page will time out.
So in 2007 our government agencies can't write web applications that cope with browser-based navigation, or conform to basic usability criteria?
Then, whilst entering my credit card details, I got distracted by a brief phone call. I then finished filling out the form, hit submit, only to receive the incredibly annoying message:
Page Timed Out
Sorry this page has timed out and the application or declaration has been cancelled.
So not only is the website cumbersome, but they have set pointlessly low expiration times on their sessions.
On the second time round, after entering my credit card details and hitting next, I'm warned about a £2.50 surcharge for credit card transactions and given the option to switch to debit card payments. Why not warn about the surcharge on the page that collects payment details?
Whilst it's great that car tax can be bought over the internet, I can't help but wonder what crazy process arrives at such an unusable implementation...
Postscript: it gets better ... I pasted the content of this post into their "have your say" comments form and clicked submit, only to receive back the following message:
Your Comments:
Please use 2000 characters or fewer.
Brilliant! Only brief feedback welcome. So I've given them this URL instead. Hello, DVLA! If you want some usability consultancy, I believe you now have my email address.
Technorati Tags: computing, critique, cars, www
June 17, 2007
Frackday
Yesterday and today is Hackday London, taking place at Alexandra Palace. I headed down bright and early yesterday, arriving just after 9am, for what I hoped would be a couple of days of interesting stuff. It was certainly interesting, but not quite in the way I'd expected.
First of all, I have to say congratulations to the Yahoo/BBC team for pulling this together. The logistics of getting 500 developers in one place are not easy, and the initial impression was a good one: well-organised, smooth registration, and walking into the main hall with the lights strobing and the smoke machine at full-pelt certainly added to the "wow" factor of seeing hundreds of the smartest and brightest minds all in one place.
It was unfortunate then that nature and networks conspired to screw up much of the first day. Nature? Lightning strikes. Networks? The BTOpenzone wifi laid-on especially for the event wasn't up to the task, and was failing every 40 minutes or so until late evening, when it finally stabilised. Of course, when you're in a room full of Web 2.0 mashup experts all trying to leverage the public APIs and web data silos that make up the whole thing, this is a serious problem. No network = no APIs = no hacks. Which pretty much ruined the whole raison d'être of the day. I wish someone had made a local cache of the internet ;-)
Of course I can't blame the hackday crew about the lightning (though I can grumble at the Alexandra Palace folk - I can't believe that the tallest building for miles around has not been hit more often). I was seriously annoyed at the networking though - if the Cocoon GT could get it working for 100+ developers on a shoestring budget for the last five years (with the occasional hiccup but nothing as bad as this), then I'd expect BT with all their resources to be able to get their act together and support 500 developers.
Perhaps the highlight of the evening was watching Doctor Who on the big screen with the sound pumped through the PA. Having everyone cheering and clapping through the episode certainly added to the atmosphere. But it wasn't enough to lift my spirits, so around midnight I decided to call it a day. I wasn't getting much useful done and I was feeling irritable and frustrated after the stupid network troubles. Rain I don't mind ... lightning I don't mind ... just don't take away my internet! So like quite a few others, I hopped in the car and headed home, leaving perhaps a couple of hundred hardened souls to battle on through the night.
Technorati Tags: computing, hackday, hackdaylondon, bbc, software, yahoo
June 16, 2007
links for 2007-06-16
-
hackers meet for frustrating day of powercuts, broken wifi, and ssh tunnelling around stupid firewalls
June 9, 2007
Nokia Media Transfer for MacOS
This is great: Nokia have just released a Media Transfer application for MacOS to transfer pictures, videos, music etc. between the phone and the computer. It seems to work quite neatly, and makes life much simpler.
Found via Vecosys (thanks, Sam!)
Technorati Tags: macos, mobile, photography, music, software
June 8, 2007
Who am I, redux
An update:
And then - it's Web 2.0 madness, I tell you ... MADNESS!
- Flickr my photos
- Last.fm my music
- Dopplr my travel but plazes no more
- Twitter my twitterings or Jaiku?
- Delicious my bookmarks
- Youtube my videos
- Facebook for social networking
Ding!
Yesterday evening, in my inbox:
Andrew,
on behalf of the Apache Software Foundation membership, I would like to extend an invitation to join the membership of the foundation.
This is fantastic news for me, and a real honour and a privilege. Being an ASF Member is the most amazing peer recognition, and it was especially heart-warming to receive loads of congratulatory emails and IMs in the following minutes.
Having been involved in the ASF since the late 90's when I first started working with Cocoon, it's great to be recognised for contributions to the ASF, which is something I deeply care about. It's particularly gratifying to be recognised like this given that I'm not a big contributor in terms of code: this recognition of less tangible contributions is a sign of the mature and diverse ecosystem that thrives at the ASF. In my opinion it's the best place for Open Source communities to form and for Open Source development to take place. This is one more step in my journey to help foster the continued growth and success of the ASF.
Hopefully this explains the congrats in Ugo's blog post, too ;-)
Technorati Tags: apache, asf, computing, opensource, software
Death of a mobile
So on Wednesday as I was opening my front door, my mobile phone jumped from my hand and fell a few feet onto solid concrete. Sadly it did not survive the fall: the screen cracked from top to bottom. The phone still worked, but I couldn't see anything.
This would be the rare occasion where I praise Orange. I called them up around 3pm, and by 10am the following day a replacement had arrived. Now I'm busy reinstalling all the bits and pieces that make my mobile life tick:
Technorati Tags: mobile, software
June 6, 2007
June 4, 2007
The Bool is Back
Discovered through the power of the internets: Mr Bool has a blog. Welcome back, sir!Technorati Tags: friends, blogging
Separated at birth: Going Live! and the Olympics
So the London 2012 Olympics have a £400,000 brand makeover. I suspect the agency involved were big fans of Going Live.
See also The Register.
Plazes no more
I know you're not supposed to kick a dog when it's down, and frankly this is more like shooting puppies in a barrel (to butcher a metaphor), but this is so bad I had to comment.
After grumbling about plazes and having the desktop client crash on me, I decided enough was enough and went over to their website to terminate my account. You can probably guess what happened next: yep, the 'Yes I'm sure, terminate my account' button fails.
It's ok though, as there's an email address listed to provide feedback to plazes if they screwed up big time or did something to upset me: uninstall@plazes.com. So I thought I'd do the decent thing and at least let them know. I'm nice like that, you see. Except after emailing I got this reply:
Final-Recipient: rfc822; uninstall@plazes.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; host mail.plazes.com[85.10.195.117] said: 550
<uninstall@plazes.com>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local
recipient table (in reply to RCPT TO command)
Ah, you couldn't make it up. Maybe I should start charging for this bug finding service I'm providing?
Technorati Tags: computing, gis, maps