Saturday, October 29, 2005
I'm particularly obsessed with phones right now, partly owing to a fraud thing.
Latest letter hightlights from the supplier: "I write to confirm that we acknowledge that the purchase of telephones pertaining to the above numbers was carried out without your authority or knowledge...we have disassociated you from all charges...the accounts have been disconnected..."
But it would be useful to connect to a human being who could discuss....
Apparently human beings are in short supply...There's only a call centre with no info.
4:24 PM|
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24/7 or 9-5?
I'm truly stunned - yes, I am - that on a Saturday daytime (when its shops are open?) Vodaphone cannot answer sales phone calls, but merely generates a standard recorded message. This on their business phone line. Perhaps they don't want to sell to business on Saturdays...
2:12 PM|
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World Usability Day awards in the UK
UK UPA - the UK chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association - is making its first awards for digital products this Thursday in London, with Bill 'scraggly-hair' Thompson kindly presenting the same. [Thanks Bill ;-)] We hope to make this an annual thing, to coincide with World Usability Day (3 November).
There are some very worthly winners, though I think it's a pity there weren't more UK products in the final vote. I nominated Audioscrobbler/Last.fm in the peer-to-peer category, amongst others, but they didn't get through to the vote.
10:19 AM|
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Interaction design job at Last.fm
Last.fm is currently looking for a designer with usability and interaction design experience. Job based in London.
See the ad.
10:12 AM|
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All pinked out
Dave need-to-know Green had a go at me the other night about recent telephone rants (and yes, he has the same experience of rogue messages when charging his Motorola V3), so I'd kind of promised myself that I wouldn't rabbit on about it any more. And then I saw the new 'pink' phones from Motororola and Siemens.
The Pink Motorola V3 Razr is the same colour as Madonna's leotard on the Hung Up video, and is presumably aimed at the 'gurlz'. [No doubt the colour is no coincidence: Motorola's website shows its Rokr phone zooming in to Hung Up, avec pic of Madonna, on it's home page.]
I've already commented on other posts that the V3 strikes me very much as a 'guy phone': smaller female hands makes this device both initially difficult to manipulate in general, and also pretty difficult to use for texting. I can't see guys buying this model in any great numbers. Are the visual messages of the Pink Razr in conflict with the interaction? Will women who buy it end up being stuck with a phone that's tricky for them to use?
And the Siemens Poppy CL75? What can I say. Ghastly, with a poppy running across both sides of the clamshell. Some cack-handed attempt to appeal to women? To 7-11 girls?
9:40 AM|
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Friday, October 21, 2005
Sony Vaio website or how not to sell computers
I'm going to put my old Sony Vaio laptop out to pasture and get myself a new machine. I can't say I'm keen on a another Vaio (for various reasons), but trawling around to see what's out there, I visit the Sony website to check out what they have.
Selecting 'Vaio & Computing > Vaio Laptops' on the UK website, I'm presented with a series of model codes which mean nothing to me - I can't even keep the model code for my current laptop in my head.
And selecting a series code at random - FS - from the six presented, I'm sent to a page that tells me to 'select a model' - by model code - from the 14 listed. Most of the model links seem to have identical tool tip text, and much identical underlying material.
Series codes and model codes mean nothing to anybody except staff at Sony. These days, most of us have a hard enough time remembering our own phone number, never mind random alphanumeric strings generated by someone else. Does Sony really believe that this is a way to sell anything to anybody (other than perhaps full-on geeks and those on the autistic spectrum)? Or have they yet to discover user-centred design?
3:28 PM|
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iTunes
Apple seems to be releasing upgrades to iTunes like there's no tomorrow. I think it was only last week I downloaded 6.0.0. Today I'm being offered the next release. There is such a thing as 'too many' when it comes to software releases.
3:22 PM|
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RSA Intellectual property charter
Last week, I attended the launch of the RSA's new charter on intellectual property, now called the Adelphi Charter. There has been praise from many quarters for the Charter's attempt to provide some framework principles for any decision on IP extension, and it has the merit of being short.
You can find a pdf of the charter at http://www.thersa.org/acrobat/adelphi_charter.pdf and there's some background info at http://www.adelphicharter.org/.
There's been some UK TV news coverage (in the context of bird flu drugs and IP) and articles in the press too:
Copyright for the digital age, by Bill Thompson: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4348970.stm
Protecting the public domain, by James Boyle: http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,,1591467,00.html
1:16 PM|
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Friday, October 07, 2005
IBF awards
We've been at the Intranet Benchmarking Forum annual conference the last couple of days. Awards were won by the Beeb for content, by O2 for design, by Nationwide for online services, and by GE Insurance for accessibility.
At IBF I happened across Nic Price, one of the winning (in more ways than one) BBC intranet team, who happens to live in the area, and happens to be a blogger, hanging out at beatnic. He's got a blog tag category 'Lordship Lane', which I live 20 yards from. Wow.
12:37 PM|
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So it's been a bit quiet here recently...
I'm up to lots of things that have taken me away from computerland. Too many 'plane and train journeys, plus lots of ethnographic stuff (equipped with notebook, pen and camera, not laptop and wi-fi). Starting some third year undergrad teaching one day a week at Coventry University (yes, sent to Coventry) next week...
12:34 PM|
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