greenthinks

Ryan Stewart (great blogger and Adobe evangelist) recently blogged about his trouble with Google Reader:

I just screwed up. I accidentally marked all of my Google reader items as read when what I intended to do was mark a specific folder as read. If this was a desktop application I could hit undo and I’d back up, have all of my data the way I want it, and be ready to read all of the delicious feeds I’ve been missing this week. But Google Reader is a web application, so I can’t do that, I’m just SOL.

This is actually just a problem with Google Reader, and not with web apps in general. In fact, many of Google’s applications make wonderful use of Undo. I was alerted to this fact by a talk that Aza Raskin (the late Jeff Raskin’s son) gave at Google, called the Death of the Desktop. He talks about “Are you sure” messages and why they were so problematic. Raskin explains what we all know instinctively, that when you have initiated a task any message that is trying to warn you away is going to be ignored as you are trying to complete your task. Over time we begin to develop muscle memory to just click OK. What works much better is realize that it is only after you have completed your task that you then may want to not have done it in the first place. This is why Gmail’s status messages that double as Undo controls work so well. Just selected 20 messages and marked them as junk? Gmail gives you the option to Undo. Just changed the labels on your work messages from “work” to “from mom?” Gmail lets you undo. As Raskin points out, though, some other Google apps need to get on board this train as well (he uses Calendar, Stewart is frustrated with Reader). For my money, this is how web apps should work, at least whenever they can. Anyone know what technical limitations on this feature might be?

Khoi Vinh, of NYTimes.com, writes the absolute best article on the new Apple-made cell phone that everyone and their grandmother seems to think is being announced/released at MacWorld Expo on Tuesday.

Vinh talks about how he has been planning on replacing his Palm Treo 650 with whatever Apple decides to release in the mobile phone arena:

In fact, when I think of that passel of features in terms of what a design tyrant like Jobs might release, it seems somewhat unlikely. Very unlikely. I mean, think about it: does it seem remotely possible that Steve Jobs would release a phone that’s a browser, an application platform, a camera, a PDA, an email client and an iPod? Would you bet money that he would? That kind of modal schizophrenia seems like it would be a clear affront to his sensibilities, and none of this even addresses whether the phone will sport a keyboard. I’d be happy if I’m wrong, but can we really expect a phone with a keyboard from the Barnum-like genius who gave us an iPod without a screen?

It’s a great piece – go read it.

I’m a pretty happy Vonage user. It’s cheaper than the Cable or Telco alternatives. Especially now that we have an income (I just found a job) and have upgraded our internet to the Time Warner maximum of 5 Megabit, it works really well.

However, I just received a phone call on our Vonage line from…Vonage! Was this because we had not paid our bill? No. Was this because there was a problem with our service? No.

It was a telemarketing call. They were trying to sell, no trick, us into adding a $9.99 second line onto our Vonage account. They could not even be straight about what they were calling for. “Hello sir, we want to let you know we are adding a second line to your Vonage service.” “But”, I said “I was under the impression that that extra feature was 10 dollars extra per month.” “Not so” the kind Indian telemarketer replied. “You will be getting this second line for only $0.99, for the first two months.” You can see where this went. I promptly told him I was not interested and he hung up.

The first place I headed after that, as steamed as I was, was the Vonage website. I logged in, and looked around for a place to “opt out” of said telemarketing calls. Maybe a “how can we contact you?” option. I would not mind receiving emails, but I definitely am NOT OK with them calling my home tricking me and my family into accepting a larger bill for features we DO NOT NEED. No such option is available on the Vonage website.

The second thing I looked for is a place for feedback on the Vonage website. They have a place for email technical support, but NO FEEDBACK FORM.

Vonage, this is completely and utterly unacceptable. It also reminds me of a post I’ve thought about on great, small companies who do sketchy things for exposure (see Netflix). I’m gonna go punch something.

GAAAAAA!!

UPDATE 11/19:  It seems that Vonage is having some real trouble these days. Here’s another disturbing tale regarding privacy and exploitation.

David Pogue’s New York Times review of the new Samgsung iPod nano-challenger, the Z5, is actually pretty spot on (though why for the love of God can he NOT do his own battery tests?!). Towards the end though, there is this bit of inanity:

MUSIC STORE INTEGRATION No. At Samsung’s suggestion, I tested the Z5 with Rhapsody’s store, which is available directly from the copy of Windows Media Player provided by the Z5’s installer. After banging my head on the keyboard for an hour, unable to get it to work, a Rhapsody rep finally let me know that, in fact, Rhapsody’s subscription store doesn’t work in Media Player — only with Rhapsody’s own software jukebox. (So much for the Microsoft “Plays for Sure” logo. Try “Plays for Some People.”)

Now, perhaps I should be blaming Samsung for sending this particularly clueless customer of theirs to WiMP instead of Rhapsody’s own client, but for the technology reporter of the New York Times to be clueless enough about Rhapsody to try to run it from inside WiMP is just absurd. While I generally like Pogue, this example just feeds the flames of the “David Pogue is an Apple shill!” slurs—and given his clear lack of knowledge or understanding about iTunes alternatives (and a complete lack of a sense that he should be embarrassed by that?!), I guess I would just have to agree.

I love Firefox. On Windows I use it for 97% of all my browsing, with IE 7 beta occupying the other 3% (if it was a choice between IE6 and anything else, I would choose anything else). One of the most helpful extensions for those of us in the “real world” is the View in IE extension. Once this is installed you can right click on any page in Firefox and click View in IE and voila! instant opening of IE with that exact page. No cutting, no pasting, no mess.

Something like this would be really useful on the Mac as well. While Firefox on Mac has been getting steadily better, there are many times when I want to open something specifically in Safari and an extension that passes the URL to Safari would be great. I could Applescript it, but FF does not have AppleScript support, as least not as of yet.

So, any extension devs up to the challenge?

UPDATE: Check the comments for the solution. I checked—it works.

It’s a Razr!

I’ve got a new cell phone, as of Saturday evening at around 8PM. What’s the big deal? Well, it’s a black RAZR:

That would be enough to go crazy about, but it’s replacing utter crap in the form of the Sony Ericsson T635. I’ve now used each model of this phone from the original iMac-inspired one on. My previous phone was the SE T610, and when that was stolen I lived out the remainder of my T-Mobile contract with an old Nokia. I then got the (then new) SE T635, hoping and hearing that they had indeed fixed some of the major flaws of the previous models. Alas, after about a year, I can safely say that not only have they not fixed those problems (hanging interface, no I/O interrupt system, bad joystick hardware implementation, etc.) but they actually introduced some new ones!

Anyway, this is supposed to be about how overjoyed I am with my new phone, the Motorola Razr V3 Black Edition. First, the geekiest thing I love:

Yup, that’s a standard mini USB connector right smack on the phone. In fact, it’s the ONLY connector the phone provides other than the cellular connection and the Bluetooth wireless. The included power plug is an AC/Mini USB cable. This is absolutely amazing for me – after years of struggling with Sony Ericsson’s flimsy proprietary connectors, I finally can connect my phone to anything over mini USB/USB. Proprietary connectors are not inherently evil. Case in point, my iPod mini uses Apple’s own private standard “Dock Connector” for connection to computers and other devices. But it has never broken on me, I have never had a problem with either the cable or the port on the iPod (am I jinxing myself) and believe me, I am not so gentle with either sometimes. SE’s connectors, on the other hand, even when I treated them like newborn babies, would stop working, need to be jiggled, and any time a cable went bad, it was back to eBay to see how much it would be for a new one this time, cause buying one of those charging cables out in the real world is just too damn expensive. OK, so I love the USB connection (the same as on recent Palms and Digital Cameras, like my fiancée’s Palm Z22 and our Canon S410).

(more…)

Tim Bray:

What all the DRM dreamers don’t want to admit is that 95% or more of the population hasn’t yet encountered DRM, and when they do, they aren’t going to like it. They’re going to scream and scream and scream and get mad as hell and not take it any more. I’m talking about the honest people who play by the rules: they buy a house and the vendor moves out and pulls no more strings. They buy sofas and flowers and wine and paper and the store where they bought them doesn’t try to limit what you can do with them, and when the digital-media vendors try to horn in on this relationship, the response is going to be “you and whose army?”

Again, amen. My parents would never put up with DRM - would yours?