Synchronize your watches

Remember all those WW2 commando epics, and right before the big mission they all synchronize their watches? Well, I dare you to do that in a digital world.

The machine era guys tried to make things easy to work. Watches were great. Assuming you wound it up and kept it attached to your wrist, it's a snap. Setting it is the easiest thing in the world. Find the approximate time. Pull the dial out and twist everything to the right time. Push in when Captain Mallory says "mark."

The BBC World Service even still has their tones for setting your watch at the top and bottom of every hour. "Bip,bip, bip, bip, bip, bip, BEEP" and push in the knob. You are on to the second.




There is, however, no way to do this in the digital era. Just among devices I have at hand:

• Entry into edit modes:


• Changing the time could be forward-only, or forward and backwards; it could go on its own speed (maybe with two speeds) or each increment is a button push; the whole time could be as one, or hours and minutes could each have their own buttons; most have key repeat, but how much and how fast?

But none of them have an explicit exit mode. They time out, eventually, sometime. When does the time entered take effect? It depends. And you can't tell. So there's no good way to set time to the second. This makes me sad.

More non-magic

Check out this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7867091.stm

This is the teaser on the RSS feed, and the article is not much better:

Mobiles connect across the waves
Merchant ship crews will soon be able to ditch satellite phones and make calls to home using their own mobiles.

How very cool! No, wait. That's not possible. They eventually admit the satcoms are still there, and there's a picocell that just gathers all the mobile signals and sends them up the normal way.

I don't think it serves anyone well to sell every service as total magic. Just yesterday my cruise control went out. In the middle of driving it disengaged and wouldn't come back on. It does work again now that it's been power cycled, but since it's so computerized, it's just magic to me.

I was able to get an explanation of what probably happened from a friend who programs robots for factories for a living. He's never seen the car, but he knows /in principle/ how PLCs (programmable logic controllers) work, and how they like to fail. He's probably right.


Obscuring technology can be great and I do it all the time. The user doesn't need to be burdened with every detail. But it seems like there should be some middle ground where you can dive into things if you need to, and you have a basic understanding so you know which box to kick or who to complain to if a system fails. I fear we're moving more and more to a world where no one will be able to even understand what is broken, much less get anything fixed when it does break.

Why should I be the expert?

Tax prep software, I am told by folks who build it, is an expert system. It knows all about it's domain area, and solves problems for me based on this knowledge, and likely information and outcomes.

So why am I the expert? I regularly have no idea, at all, what it's asking me but the assumption seems to be that I understand the jargon perfectly.

As 2008 tax paperwork begins trickling in, I start thinking of the great idea I came up with last year. How about I don't fill out forms the way the government, or any tax-expert does, and instead I just gather my documents, and enter those. So, right now, I can go to the TaxCut site and say I got a form. They guide me through obvious choices, and I pick "its from a bank or investment management company" (of course, they offer last year's forms and companies as an option) and tell me it's probably a 1099-INT, then I enter that info.

Weeks later, as it determines I have probably got everything entered, it asks to make sure, and then goes through all the questions about if I have any farm income, or am blind, or dead or whatever. But why not look at the actual use case, of everyday folks, frustrated by taxes and the piles of paperwork, and use that to solve problems instead of creating more.

The Medium Influences the Message

I subscribe to most of the right blogs, and have seen probably dozens of really top-notch typographic or infographical short movies. But yesterday I saw, for the first time, one of them actually on a TV. This one:


The Universal Declaration of Human Rights from Seth Brau on Vimeo.

For detail about the movie, this blog post explains it. The subject is the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which is 60 years old this year. We still seem to have enough dictators and warlords and other assorted jackasses, so it seems worth publicizing a bit more perhaps.


Anyway, it was much, much more moving on TV than in a tiny window on the computer screen. It would be nice to see these sorts of things instead of the horrible, fear-inducing terrorists are everwhere sports, and similar ads that actually get aired.


I'll note that the background is pretty yellow on ATSC at 720p, at least. It looks rather good, so I suspect this is on purpose.

Insulting your customers with poor process

Most process and customer service is bad, so it's more often exceptionally good things that are worth noting anymore. It takes something really bad to make me annoyed enough to tell everyone.

But today I am with my Dad getting an MRI for his ongoing cancer thing and we had to go to Shawnee Mission Medical Center. Most hospitals seem to have gone to this system, which I guess they think is providing extra customer service, where you have to check in at the front desk. Then they have you fill out some paperwork in a cubicle and someone – usually the person who has been with you the whole time – walks you to the department you are visiting.

SMMC tried this, and failed. It's particularly galling as they are just finishing a huge expansion, and the hospital is now topped with a large, green glass polygon. The reception desk is immediately inside the front door, so you have to wait in the drafty lobby. Did I mention the waiting? Two stations only, and you apparently (we pre-registered) cannot get out of there in under three minutes. Some people take over 10 minutes. We were in this line for a long time, and there's no need for it.



We didn't fill out paper at the cubicles, but I was there long enough that it was clear what was happening. The reception desk people, who take too long anyway, then make you wait in a waiting room. Eventually (based on the number of people there and how deeply they were into their magazines) they call you. Privacy of course means they cannot, so they say "Sheila, last name starts with D."

Escorts are the worst part though. As in some places, they are senile volunteers. But these guys sit there behind the main reception desk, drinking coffee and joking. So you come up and see a long line, two people working (and sometimes they walk away so its only one) and a bunch of folks not apparently helping. This is expressly annoying, and was overtly so not just to me.

But the poor escort system doesn't stop! The old men are not paying attention, and are hard of hearing. So, the reception person gives them a folder of critical info you need to get your procedure done (they give you nothing) then he wanders off and comes out several yards away and starts yelling your name. Even after I said it, and raised my hand he was confused and stopped everyone to ask "are you Scott?!" Then he helps you by walking slower than even old, sick people, and points out the way to the MRI department, which otherwise you'd never find, I guess.



Poor process can prevent people from concluding tasks, or it can be part of something they are already dedicated to or are required to do, and it just insults and annoys them. Don't think just because there is no immediate measure like dropped-carts and churn that poor process isn't affecting your customers and your bottom line.

No snowplows would have been better

Big snowfall this morning. And that's normally good, cause we like snow. But apparently every city in the area fired all people who know how to watch the weather report. So, it was almost un-driveable all the way from my driveway to Lawrence.



Very little evidence of plowing, and mostly quite dumb. Like, the ramps from K7 to K10, not plowed. Barely passable at 5 mph. In fact, I only saw two plows the whole time, both on K10. And both were being marginally useful, severely impeding traffic and one actually tried to kill someone; dropped a side blade almost on top of a Civic who was about to pass, that threw so much snow in the air I (50 m back) had zero visibility for way too long. Then the plow veered from the left lane all the way to exit on the right.

All in all, it might have been more helpful to just have zero plows and we make our own way entirely.

Marketing usually trumps technology

About the early (like, soldering-things-together-in-their-living-room early) history of Cisco, the internet hardware and software company. Much of the product was software based, and with early networking no one even knew exactly why they needed such stuff.

"Cisco cleverly sold software that plugged into the wall, had a fan and got warm,'' Gorin said. "People had a long history of buying things that plugged into the wall, made noises and got warm.''

Interesting history in general. From here: http://pdp10.nocrew.org/docs/cisco.html