Why do we have to wait for receipts?

Leaving the house this morning, I notice the car is almost out of gas. Not "glowing light" bad, but Lawrence is a long ways off, so we aren't gonna make it. So, I stop at Quik Trip. And when I am done and the hose is hung up, and the fuel port is all sealed, I am still waiting for the receipt to print... Though I have done this thousands of times, I just realized, this is a friction point. If I had the choice, I wouldn't put up with a wait in the cold here. I feel this is yet another case of modern technology being implemented in a way reminiscent of the past, yet missing enough of the point that it makes everything harder. Think of a receipt in a simple (or old-time) cash register, or adding machine. Its a record of what you /just/ typed. A couple lines get printed automatically when you press the button to say the transaction or calculation is complete. Then about 1 second later, you can rip it off and look at it. Why don't receipts on computerized registering systems (at the grocery store, at the gas pump) work like this? A transaction starts: print the header, date time. Pick a product, print it on the receipt. Total it, and it prints a couple lines. Etc. By the time you get to the end, Of course, in many stores, its even worse: You have to wait for the itemized receipt, then wait for the credit card receipt the store keeps, THEN they print the receipt you sign. And you sign it while the system and cashier is idle. Great planning. So, I have no faith anyone is actually working on improving this. Get used to the wait.

Am I the only one disappointed with My Location?

Oops: I had somehow gotten the impression this was an iPhone-only service (I blame the iPhone hoopla, its not /my/ fault!). Since it works across platforms and networks, that is more interesting; I guess Google didn't want to mess with getting the rights from each carrier to be a certified-for-LBS appliation. Which means I go back to being mad at every carrier for restricting this information. Oh, and My Location doesn't work (yes, I have the latest version) on my S60 phone. So, that makes me sad. Actually, to be more clear, I am bored with Google's "new" My Location product. I am disappointed with the numerous, generally fawning reactions to it. Its not that I have anything against having location in the iPhone. In fact, it tops my list of things that disappoint me about it. Instead, its because location is not just GPS. GPS phones can generally step down from telemetry sending to triangulation, then sector, then cell, to give some location sense to the application. This has been available for at least five years (I worked on UI for it at least that long ago). So, to me, non-GPS location is table stakes. This technology should have been included with iPhone from day one. Being not familiar with the AT&T network, maybe they never installed the triangulation software, but that just means the whole network is behind the curve. It may be marginally interesting how Google implemented this (is it really just for them, or did AT&T really just install it on the network and every service can, theoretically, get to it?) but I suspect not. For example, I am hearing reports of it not working sometimes. The network always knows which tower you are on, so if its not falling back, maybe I am in fact disappointed in Google. Or maybe AT&T; google is making users map the towers? I don't get it. (For the record, I was already disappointed with Nokia and/or AT&T for not including similar LBS with the GPS-less N75. No one gets a free ride from me).

Comparing customer service

Just a few months ago Sprint had three lines of service from me. And not at all entirely because I worked there. I kept them after I left, and its important to note my first mobile was several years before I started working there. 210 is the first KC (MO) area MSA exchange, 0455 means I am the 455th sub including test phones. Just a few hours ago, Sprint still had two of my subscriptions. How did they loose them? Why don't they (probably) care about entirely churning a customer with some ELEVEN years of solid history? Okay, the N75 is not their fault. But their bad service, inability and — more importantly — disinclination to fix technical and billing issues, led me to give up this afternoon. I'm not gonna rag on Sprint any more in specifics, except to say additional lies ensued when I went to the store just now (hint: anyone want to buy a 595U with less than 1 hour of use? Seriously, goes on eBay at the end of the bill cycle). Frankly, the experience with AT&T has been very similar. Instead, I wanted to point out the differences I noted when working with the VZW guys.

• They were genuinely happy to see me. When others came in, to pay bills or get service, they were still nice to those people.
• Offered all sorts of other accout help info. Alison has access to the account now, not just me.
• Understood totally that most people do not want to pay much for the phone. Only tried to upsell to the rugged phone, which we got.
• They have a rugged phone! Have to go to iDen to get a Sprint phone that's even splashproof.
• Porting was even easier than with ATT. Almost seamless.
• They offered to bring over the address book info from the 325! Its not even their phone, but the did it, for free, proactively. Claims to do it all the time. Rarely gotten this, with Sprint phones, with lots of pleading.
• While the prices were "after mail in rebate" which made me sad, the mail-in forms are all filled in with everything from the store, and the sales guy hilited the two boxes so we can tell them apart.

All in all, it felt like buying our new TV. A totally normal consumer experience. Satisfying but for the bill. I have postulated that the brand of most US mobile operators is not speed, coverage, or whatever their brand docs and ads say, but "bad customer service." ATT & especially Sprint really bear this out. I haven't been with VZW more than an hour, so its hard to comment, but maybe there's some hope for the sector.

Okay, that's all I am gonna put up with from Sprint

I just cancelled my aircard with Sprint. Like, I am typing this while on the phone, and will press "Publish Post" when I hang up. This afternoon I'll go up the street, return the card (its under 30 days), and then drive across the parking lot to the VZW store. I do like CMDA and EVDO (and RevA speed!) so I'll stick to that platform, but the card keeps not working, and Sprint acts baffled about it, and makes me talk to them for hours to fix it in ways that only last a few days. Yes, I will probably have to pay more per month, as I was on their "I have friends at Sprint" plan, but I think I'll learn to live with a premium for an actually functioning srrvice.

Do not wash your mobile phone

At least not with a washing machine. And, though others may come out fine, even with severe disassembly... ...Alison's KRZR did not. Totally dead. I suspect it fried itself while powered on in the water, and no amount of work afterwards could save it. To top it off, Sprint doesn't care if you buy a phone from them, they reset your 'free stuff' period at each activation. My old KRZR given to Alison just a couple months ago wiped that, so its full-retail time. Being christmas, and so on, this is not gonna happen. The already somewhat broken PM-325 is coming back into service shortly. Maybe after that we'll find something good on eBay. And if anyone has an unused (Sprint, CDMA) phone that, say, has all the keys working, and they'll sell cheap, tell us about it. Okay, onto the mobile-ubiquity lessons. Alison had to live all weekend, and all day with no mobile. Most missed, the clock and alarm-clock functions. She had to... talk to people... to get the time.

Helvetica on DVD

Remember the Helvetica movie? Well, its now available on Netflix! Its at the top of my Queue right now.

Personally, I am still into Akzidenz Grotesk, and playing and am starting to play with the Olive/Nord family. Gillsans isn't bad for heads, but its SO heavily used by all the Apple presentation software themes.

Mask the /secret/ part of the information

The article Best practices to redact account numbers from today's RISKs 24.91 brings up some good points, and one I have failed to execute correctly myself. The general gist is that redacting or masking of personal information should be done carefully to reduce the risk of a bad person hacking the rest of it. Credit cards are well done, only revealing the last 4 digits (to tell which card you used). While some of the masked data is easily guessable, like bank ID, enough remains as an unknown, individualized string its safe. Where I for one had failed was in understanding the method by which SSNs are encoded. A lot of organizations reveal the last 4 of the SSN for identifying purposes. But aside from other errors of revealing, the first 6 are reasonably crackable as they encode the issuing location and date; revealing these will generally work well to distinguish individuals, while hiding the individualized information. Similar issues arise with other strings, like bank accounts. So, analyze your data before figuring out how to use it best, and most safely.

Location, proximity, mapping... for dogs

Its interesting from a conceptual point of view, though in specific its built for a very niche market. The Garmin Astro is a system: a GPS-60 with an extra antenna, and a big orange box that straps onto your dog. Its designed for hunters with dogs, i.e. bird hunting. I guess the dogs can range relatively far afield, and always have shock collars, so if they ignore that, you can just go get them with the GPS tattletale. The unit on the dog (or dogs, up to 10) is a GPS itself. Since dogs don't have thumbs, there is no readout. The giant antennas link the devices over MURS mostly around 151mhz in VHF. MURS is specifically authorized for data transmission, so that makes it easy, though sadly any retrans is specifically forbidden so I presume its pure simplex, with CTCSS or something to ID the units (and reduce audible data streams). I'd love a swarm mentality, with multiple dog-side transceivers working in tandem to relay the data, like if one is out of range of the base unit. Myself, I'd like to see something like this without the cumbersomeness, and expense, of the custom radio link. Our dog likes to run away, but practically everywhere I am has some mobile coverage, so a cheap GPS and cellular link would be enough for me. And in general this is the sort of out of box thinking that I like to see. Gives me new hope for exciting location services in mobiles, hopefully soon. Edit: And I thought I had discovered this neat product in a corner. Two hours after I post this, the wife points out an article on Garmin in the latest Newsweek that specifically mentions the Astro. At least, if the mythology is true, I like the genesis of the product; an exec around a campfire while his buddies say "couldn't your company fix this?"

Why does Opera Mini hate me so much?

That's what it feels like. I have been through... I forget, but 3 or 4 versions of Opera Mini on this phone. And a couple on my previous one. I forgive them for changing the featureset. So the manner in which bookmarks are displayed changes. And I got it when there are pre-populated bookmarks; that (and browser/homepage search) is where the money to pay for this comes from. But I do not like how every time I upgrade the software ignores everything that has gone before, especially bookmarks. This time I am particularly aggravated by this lack of upgrade path. Now that its out of beta, the beta browser yells at me all the time that I should upgrade. By manually typing, in a totally different browser. Actually, at least on mine, a link to a download would work out. And how hard can it be to go check out the config files from the previous install? So, after the always annoying install process for mobile software, I still have to rekey all my bookmarks, then uninstall the old version.

My favorite recording meter

This is right near my house, tucked between a couple of buildings in the Script Pro complex off Johnson drive. More photos of it Seems to be something from the gas company. If you can't tell by looking, its a disk of paper, adhered to a very slowly moving metal disk. An ink needle drives a trace based on... whatever. Gas pressure I presume. Sorta like the classic seismometer, but its a disk (not a long tape) and records over a one month period. And, its still working. The paper is regularly changed, and presumably someone is reading the information. Seems to work just fine, therefore. I just wonder how long until its replaced by a digital device, feeding back to the home office by wires or radio.

Speaking of choosing to fail

I won't claim to be CEO material, but I cannot get my head around Sprint's decision to split with Clearwire. I blame Sprint because I worked there long enough, it seems like just the kind of thing they'd do. Maybe Clearwire is at fault, but I cannot see how it's in Sprint's interest to let them go. At best, there's a new competitor. Who thinks Craig McCaw, et. al. will just call it quits after a bad day at the market. At the least, Sprint will muddle thru as they always do, and launch a substandard product, without any integration (technical, billing or marketing) with the rest of the company, just late enough to get stomped by a competitor. I would not be suprised to see them drop or massively delay the whole WiMax product. And this makes me sorta sad.

What can we do?

Listening to a special report on Marketplace about global consumerism and sustainability this evening (after shopping, while driving back home for an hour, and watching a line of cars going off into the distance). At 11:26, there's this exchange with the host, and geography prof Jared Diamond. He's studied the downfall of the Mayans and so forth, and published a book chillingly titled Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

Ryssdal: "The same way I would imagine there is no one thing you can point to where you can say 'that is the tipping point of decline,' is there one thing that can be done to reverse that?" Diamond: "Yes. And that is to stop looking for the one thing that we can do to reverse the decline."

Regardless of the context, great response. The rest of the interview is rather worth it as well. The show as a whole is hit and miss. Good data, but some oddly framed (the real Simpsons were stupid). And the bumper about recycling Conex containers was insane; those things are expensive, and heavily re-used. No one throws them away.

Audio will drive the mobile web? Maybe.

The other week Barry Welford proposes that voice recognition is the killer-enabling-technology behind a future explosion of the mobile web. I am of two minds about audio for the web. In output, I love it. I heavily used the Sprint voice web in the past (much of it has become out of date), and it was not that well designed in many aspects, and pure audio. I've been waiting for years for the technology to allow simultaneous audio and data streams; now I am waiting for someone to take advantage of it. Audio with the visual web should work really well. It can tie directly into portal theory, with the read-back version being a summary (due to speed), then slightly more detail in a glanceable view, and more info if you scroll or click. Its probably less useful for long articles, but the principle could be inverted so the visual component supports the audio stream as I have mentioned before. Not sure what I think of visual voicemail systems. They are nudging this way, but none thrill me totally as yet. Input-wise, I have grave concerns. Star Trek, et. al. use voice to engage the viewer in the otherwise very individual-centric behavior of interacting with a computer. But, this is exactly why it does not work in my experience. Recognition quality is not a concern of mine. As long ago as the early '90s, I was using OS/2 almost exclusively, and it worked perfectly for interaction, and so well for word recognition as to be actively usable for typing. I'll even ignore the speed (its a LOT slower to talk than to point or type, low-literacy folks aside). The problem is the required isolation. Consider the use of an IVR today: how much has it been confused because someone next to you talks? How often have you had to go away, or wait to make such a call because your mom keeps wondering who you are talking to? I cannot think of a way around this, so voice input just seems like an insurmountably niche product to me. I hear, never having been there, Japanese commuter trains are very quiet, despite practically everyone clicking away on their mobile. Can you imagine them all talking to their phones instead?

Wearable computers

Picking up some stuff from HyVee on the way home this evening, there's someone walking around with this rig, scanning products, with something strapped to her hand: I just had to ask, so I stopped her. Very nice, explained briefly and let me take a photo. Its an inventory taking system. The thing on her hand is a laser barcode scanner. Remember the old ones? A sort of adding-machine that stole part of its keyboard from a stenotype machine. Well, as far as I gathered. I never really ran one more than a few minutes. I always thought those were interesting, even before I knew anything about this, or cared professionally. What other wearable device even existed 20 years ago? Symbol (who knew they were owned by Motolora!) makes a series of these, all the way down to "ring" scanners, and miniature wrist computers. This one is some sort of windows mobile device. Hard to see the screen as it had some sort of polarizing screen cover (for glare or secrecy I do not know). I also didn't catch /why/ you need all that computer. The operator seemed to be mostly scanning and pressing buttons to change modes (like, to switch products), and didn't look at the screen. But, assuming you do need to see what the device is doing, it still seems a bit overdone; that seems like way too much to tote around for any task that is likely while walking around a store. I also cannot find this setup. Symbol shows the scanner bolted to a smaller device, so I guess you can plug it into any number of things. Assuming you do need to see the display regularly, I'd love to see what else could be done, like attaching it to a smartphone (through bluetooth maybe, and you pair as needed), or one of the long-promised HMDs, at least as the display. I admit much of this is relatively speculative. I'd love to get my hands on this, or follow the operator around for a few hours to see how it really works out.

Error message of the week

The more I pay attention to ATMs, the more I am suprised at how tenuously the software is aware of the hardware. Entirely aside from the odd physical design (e.g. all the slots look the same) the software is often unaware what you have done, what peripheral hardware has done, or when its obviously broken. The other week, when depositing into one of those new-fangled ones the reader kept spitting my check out. Apparently, something made the reader unhappy. But, it never told the actual software that runs the ATM. So the GUI kept asking if I wanted more time. The sign above is similarly dumb. The cash acceptor device should probably be able to say its not working. But if not, why can't someone remotely load a message to the idle screen (and remove the ability to select "deposit cash" from the options menu) instead of forcing the branch to tape a hand-written note to the machine? It probably looks like I am picking on ATMs. And I guess I am a little. But I think they deserve it for being very common devices (economies of scale should negate "its too expensive" arguments), used by everyone (so the usability bar should be low) and with inherent trust and security issues. But mostly, I pick on them becuase their faults are nicely symbolic of the faults of many other systems.

Some more about the N75

I find all sorts of interesting stuff when I try to use my gear in unusual ways. This weekend I was running around in the woods trying to not get shot by 40 marines (okay, everyone just had blanks). Radios kept failing, so I spent a lot of time trying to use my phone as a cheater comm. Ran into a few annoyances: I wanted to keep the phone with me for 3 days straight with no chance to charge it. Ideally, I'd simply power off, but since AT&T finds it necessary to have max-volume "3G" meteors fly around at power on, I can't really do that. And... no "airplane mode" that I can find. So, I just silenced it and it died after 2 days. Lots of network failures. Really poor signal, but I could mostly make voice calls, and the signalling channel (to get MWI) worked even with NO indicated signal. Unlike every other phone on the planet, I could not send a text message to save my life, though. It seems like it was insisting on some special 3G data network, so failed even when voice was barely there. After the time in the woods, I had to ride in a car a few hours to get back home. Lots of email reading and responding, but I realized this weekend how much of my emailing is not just my random thoughts, but links to useful information. There is no clipboard on the N75 in general, or in any of the browsers I have. So, I had to leave a bunch of stuff unread until I could get home. And, to add another item, just now when I was looking around in my phone for interesting artifacts of these experiences to take a screenshot of, it locked up. I explored this a bit, and it seems to be a UI failure; when a call came in it went back to the normal mode and worked. But the dead app (Messaging) was still locked, and there's no way to force quit it (without a battery-off power cycle). No software can be 100% flawless, so I hope smartphones provide ways around this better than they are now.