No Maps

I’m old; really old.  When I first started using a computer to communicate with other computers, what we now call the internet didn’t exist outside of a small network of military and educational machines.  The entire routing table for the net would fit on a sheet of paper.  My modem was screaming fast at 2400 Baud.  My PC was a powerhouse 386SX.  Most importantly, there were no search engines as we know them now.  None.  No Google.  No Yahoo.  No Bing.  Nothing.

So, without a map, how did we manage to find our way from Tillery Hill to the Patoka Lake Overlook?  It wasn’t easy.  There were many BBS’s (bulletin board systems—think free standing websites).  They often had the phone numbers of other BBS’s.  Yes, I wrote phone numbers, because remember, this was before the internet.  To get somewhere online, you dialed up someone else’s phone line and coupled with their modem.  It was a one to one relationship.  Want 10 users online at once?  You needed 10 phone lines.

I know what you’re thinking (other than, “jeez, he is old”), how the heck did you find your first BBS with no search engine?  Simple, you asked someone or even more commonly, you read it in the local computer newsletter.  A newsletter printed on dead trees.  Seriously.

Why am I bring all this up?  Just to remind you and me both, search engines changed the world in ways we seldom think of.  They are the basis for an entire economy that wasn’t even a dream in most people’s mind only 20 years ago.  They are the root and guide of nearly everything we do on the net.

Have you hugged your favorite search engine today?

I don’t feel the Quora love

I have to admit, I just don’t feel the love on Quora.  To bring you up to speed if you’re one of the nine humans left who isn’t gaga over it, let me bring you up to speed.  In a nutshell, Quora is a site where registered users ask questions and other people answer them and yet other people chime in with comments, clarifications, and ratings.

Sounds like just about any other board on the net, right?  The difference seems to be that the amount of hype and excitement has brought a very broad slice of respondents together.  Ask a question about Dropbox and you may get responses from the founder, the founder’s mother, and half of Dropbox’s coding team.

That’s the good.  The not so good is that it is an incredibly tight, insular, community.  New comers are not exactly discouraged, but the learning curve is very steep.  Everything from a confusing layout, non intuitive search function, and a remarkably well established set of norms, make diving in a rather daunting proposition. 

I honestly don’t know how much time and effort I want to invest in Quora.  I remind myself that I felt much the same about Facebook, Twitter, and texting, back in the day.  I’m keeping an open mind for now.

There has been a good discussion taking place among my friends on Twitter.  Due the limitations of Twitter, I have invited them to bring the chat here.  Anyone else reading this is welcome to weigh in too.  I’ve extremely interested in your opinion!

Hey Best Buy: How about NO!

In the last month, I’ve helped two of my wife’s friends purchase laptops.  In both cases, they went to their local Best Buy, one in New Jersey and the other in Pennsylvania.  Each store was clean, well stocked, and had reasonably priced merchandise.  Similarly, in each instance, the friend bought a lower end laptop—something in the $500-700 range.  It was after the selection was made and before money changed hands, that the problem began.

I understand a stores desire to upsell and the need to offer service and accessories to people, I really do.  What we were bombarded with in both cases was an “optimizing and set up” service.  The first time, the salesperson was very vague, offering only generalities of “better performance” and “protection”.  The second was much more specific.  Below is a list of some of these services.  My comments are in red.

We’ll install top quality anti-virus, because what they put on them at the factory is worthless.  It came with a trial of Norton and they were offering Kaspersky.  Both are OK, but pricey.  I simply removed Norton and installed the solid, dependable, Avast.

The laptops are full of crap from the factory that needs to be removed before they’re usable.  Like what?  Both came with surprisingly few trial programs, no popups, no AOL pitches.  I wonder how the manufactures would like to hear their vendors describe the products like that?

We’ll test that WiFi is working.  The purchaser can do that too, by turning on the laptop at home.  If it doesn’t, bring it back.  Are you planning on testing every other function before it leaves the store?  Are the network cards in your laptops particularly unreliable? 

We need to remove all that stuff that Best Buy puts on there, because it will nag you and slow down your computer.  Let me get this straight, you want to charge me to remove detrimental software that you put on there in the first place???  If I bought a new car, would you expect me to pay the dealer to remove cement blocks they put in the trunk?  

Needless to say, after some firm discussion, we did not buy the optimization plan for $100.  In each case, it took me under an hour, including time to explain what I was doing, to remove a few things, install a few things, and run defrag.  

As I said, I’m good with stores trying to sell a service, but when they cross into the realm of fantasy and when they try to frighten non-tech savvy buyers, that’s not cool.  Are you listening, Best Buy?

Hey Foursquare, I quit

I feel like such a failure.  I tried and tried to like Foursquare; I really did.  You know the drill.  Log in from your mobile phone and let your friends know all the great places that you hang out.  Find new eating spots, bars, and benefit from other users tips and business’s special offers.

That’s the promise, but the reality was quite different.

Why I quit Foursquare:

1.  I lead a boring life.  I quickly discovered that 95% of the places I go could be lumped into work, home, gas station, grocery store, and church.  I seem to spend very little time exploring hip, new Jazz clubs.

2.  The application is slower to get a location lock than molasses in Michigan in January.  Do you know how uncomfortable it is to get “that look” from your significant other because she doesn’t appreciate standing in the parking lot while waiting for the Foursquare app to decide to cozy up to the GPS chip?  Since other GPS dependent programs have no trouble getting a lock, and I’ve experienced it on two different phones, I’m blaming this squarely on Foursquare.

3.  Plain and simple, the Blackberry version is awful.  I can’t speak to Android or the iPhone versions, but along with half of the smart phone users in the US, I’m stuck on Blackberry.  Being stuck on this platform, it doesn’t make me a happy user to be neglected.  In more than a year, you guys couldn’t even figure out how to make your product WiFi aware? 

4.  Duplicates.  This one is huge.  Every time I go to check in to a major venue or a popular store, I’m confronted with choices on the order of WalMart, Wal-Mart, Wal Mart, WalMart #9337, Rt 9 Wal-Mart, and so on.  Until Foursquare gets a handle on duplicates, the system is going to get dirtier and dirtier and less and less useful.

5.  Lack of business support.  In more than a year of off and on use, I’ve come across exactly one electronic offer for 10% off watch repairs. 

If anyone can address these issues, I’d love to hear from you.  I truly want to like Foursquare.  It seems like it could be a fun diversion and I have no doubt that I’ll give it another try, but for now, no more mayorships for me.

I love my dentist

I have to come clean and admit it—I love my dentist.  Well, not Dr. Bookman specifically, although Miryam is certainly a nice person and all.  What I love is her practice and its use of technology.

As anyone who knows me in real life or reads this blog is aware, I live, breath, and bleed technology.  It’s what I do for a living and what I do for a hobby, when my dear wife is not forcing me to get outside and enjoy some fresh air.  The only part of my life heretofore untouched by technology has been dentistry.  Even my medical doctor uses wireless tablets instead of a clipboard in the exam room.  Only dental care seemed stuck in the mid 1960’s.

Dr. Bookman’s website is not going to win any awards for cutting edge design or art content, but that’s exactly as it should be.  I don’t go to my dentist’s site to be amused by a 45 second Flash intro, unlabeled navigation tabs, or loud midi files playing 80’s music.  When I go to the site, I’m looking for specific information such as location, appointments, and contact information.  Let’s take a look at each of these on her site.

Location/Contact Information.  On many sites, dental and others, it’s practically a state secret where the damn place is!  The internet is global.  A search engine may have brought me to you.  Don’t assume that I just know the Beans Bar and Grill is in Los Angeles.  Every sub page on Dr. Bookman’s website contains this:


Additionally, the location page has a full sized, live, Google map, complete with a “get directions” form:



Appointments.  Every page has a Request Appointment button that invokes a simple form:



Here’s the important part.  They actually seem to monitor it!  When I submitted it for my first appointment, I had a call back within two minutes and an appointment for the next day.  When my wife used the form, she received a call back within the hour. 

Other pluses.  You can take a virtual tour of the office and see actual photos of the premises.  The pictures are crisp, clear, don’t require the download of some obscure plugin, and are of a reasonable size.  The main page has a button linking to a decently done, fairly frequently updated, Facebook page.  Good use of email reminders for appointments.  Oh, did I mention that Dr. Bookman is also a great dentist?

Some suggestions. 
1. Put a copyright date on the site and keep the date updated.  Not only does that protect your legal rights, it keeps the site looking up to date. 

2. Get a new picture for the shot of the outside of the building.  The one you have is not flattering and is crooked.  Think of it as a tooth.  It needs to look nice and be straight.

3. Keep the Facebook page updated and moderated.  Fresh content at least twice a week (daily, if possible) and close moderation will keep visitors coming back.

Overall, I give Bookman Dentistry’s website a solid A-.

Breasts and Technology

Here it is, 2011 and when a woman living in an urban center of the United States needs to have a doctor at a major medical center look at a mammography done at another major medical center in the same urban center, how do you think it’s done?

Yes, you guessed right.

1. The patient makes phone calls.
2. The first center makes a phone call to the “long term medical records storage unit”.
3.  Someone at the “long term medical records storage unit” finds a box and then locates the films.
4.  A courier is dispatched to drive the films to the first center.
5.  A receptionist at the first center looks at the hand written letter from the patient giving permission and then hands the (original and only existing) films to a man claiming to be the patients husband.
6.  Patient and her husband drive the films to the second facility and give it to the new doctor.

Really?

I can download over an encrypted connection, an entire Linux distro in about 3 minutes, at home.  How can hospitals possibly justify using medieval methods to move medical data?  If this was an emergency, would they have dispatched a pigeon with the films tied to its back?

I Want My Google Toolbar

Some things in life puzzle me deeply.  Why do we Americans drive on the right side of the road, but the English on the left, who was crazy enough to be the second person to eat a habanero pepper, and why can’t I install Google Toolbar on the Google Chrome browser??

I love Chrome.  It’s fast, extensible, elegant, and stable, but why can’t I install the Google Toolbar on it?  I have an extensive set of bookmarks set up in Google Toolbar, use the various other features constantly, and am just, plain used to it.  The fact that I can’t add it to Google’s flagship browser makes no more sense to me than Ford building a super traction, highly gas efficient, 200,000 mile rated tire that fits every make of car except for Fords.

Anyone from Google listening?  Why??

Dear Future Self

Dear Future Self,

Hello Paul. I know you're surprised to hear the future you, but I have to ask you to suspend your disbelief for a few minutes and listen, as I carry vital messages both for you and for the entire world.

1.  I realize you’re buried in work, but take the time to document code, changes to systems, and in general, the reasons for just about anything of significance.  You’ll thank me/you in six months or six years when you don’t have to spend Christmas eve trying to puzzle out why you picked a string literal for that particular field.

2.  Don’t piss him off.  Yes, it feels good now and the laughter around the water cooler when you tell the story will be enjoyable, but he’ll nurse a grudge for years.  When you least expect it and don’t even remember the initial incident, he’ll sabotage your career and you’ll never know why you didn’t get the new position.  Just be nice.

3.  Slow down.  You’re on the way to work on a Monday.  Is it really necessary to go 22 MPH over the speed limit?  You’ll avoid a nasty ticket and a big fight with your wife. 

4.  Make sure your passwords are all secure and complex.  I can’t give you the details, but you really won’t enjoy your 15 minutes of fame on YouTube if you don’t.

And last and perhaps most importantly, don’t eat the sushi from 7-11 on March 28th, 2019. 

Sincerely,
Paul