Picture My World

I just finished one of the best science fiction books I’ve read in a long time, reminding me what an incredible author Dan Simmons is. Ilium is one of those books you can’t put down yet hate turning each page because it takes you closer to the end (but, luckily, there is a sequel — Olympus). It’s an intelligently written book set in the future and the past with characters from Homer’s Iliad and Shakespeare’s The Tempest. If you’re familiar with either of those works, you’ll probably enjoy the book more than I did (being semi-literate, I haven’t read Homer or much Shakespeare ). Simmons also keeps three parallel threads going through the novel — a technique that I particularly like.

I first read Dan Simmons’ Phases of Gravity about an ex-astronaut struggling for meaning in his life ever since walking on the moon. I barely remember it, but now I want to read it again.

It’s not often that software has this kind of power over me, but Outlook really makes me feel stupid sometimes.

My wife and I share an email account. We have this unwritten protocol where one of us might reply to an email and leave the original one in the InBox for the other’s information. Outlook screws up this workflow because of a small bug.

My wife likes to open emails in a separate window and then reply from there. She often leaves the email window open. What happens then or, rather, what doesn’t happen then is Outlook doesn’t update the email shown in the InBox with the new status. In other words, the email in the main Outlook window doesn’t get marked with the “Replied” graphic until the email window is closed. When I come and look at the email, it looks like no reply has been sent.

Naturally, I reply.

If my wife and I said the same thing, I feel mildly stupid. But, if we say contradictory things, I feel like a complete idiot.

Thanks, Microsoft Outlook!

I have 5 instant messenger accounts (AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Google, and Skype).

I have 6 different email accounts (more if you count aliases).

I have 3 phone numbers.

Crazy.

I have been waiting for this service for a long time. A (free) synchronized news reader service. I’ve always liked Bloglines, but have been frustrated by it because it doesn’t sync with my desktop news reader (NetNewsWire) that I prefer to use if I’m at my primary computer.

NewsGator also syncs the read/unread state of each individual post. It’s brilliant and with NetNewsWire, synchronizing happens seamlessly.

It syncs with NewsGator’s other products (some of which are for Windows).

This is only of interest to my Jewish readers.

Steven Weis points to this Jewish Week article about the demise of Edah.

*** This is not a Rogers web site.  Stop posting your contact information in the comments.  ***

Our latest phone bill had a URL to redeem a free gift for one of our Rogers services. I went to a page that offered a free ring tune. I never buy these things and thought it’d be fun.

First, I had to choose my phone type. I knew it was a Sony Ericsson, but what model was it? J300, T236, T237, W600i, or one of 5 others? Luckily for me, I remembered the phone had a status page that reported its model number (it’s nowhere on the phone’s case).

That hurdle jumped, I selected the ring tune and it said it would send it to my phone. I quickly got a message on the phone and selected “Load” only to be greeted with:

Unauthorized
We’re sorry, you are unauthorized to view this page (ip=205.205.50.3-0)

Thanks, guys. Another customer experience shot to hell.

*** This is not a Rogers web site.  Stop posting your contact information in the comments.  ***

I posted some of my UPA photos on flickr. I didn’t take very many pictures at all… That’s the problem with an SLR.

Right now, my biggest take away from this conference is “don’t fly to Denver”. As I wrote, my flight here was delayed multiple times and now my flight home is also delayed over an hour (so far). I also got security screened which included a lovely pat down. (And, no, I haven’t been away from my wife so long that I enjoyed that at all.)

Let’s forget the immediacy of my current situation.

The conference itself was excellent. Everyone at the conference was approachable and, unlike a conference like CHI, I didn’t worry that I’d strike up a conversation with some stuffy academic operating on another planet. It was a given that everyone was doing the same sort of work and facing the same challenges. I even had a great chat with next year’s conference chair, Alain Robillard-Bastien, on the shuttle to the airport. To Matthew, Matt, Steph, Ashley, Trent, Scott, Suzanne, Larry, Daniel, Josephine, and others I’m forgetting: it was great meeting you all. Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew Oliphant created a Wikipedia entry for the Usability Professionals’ Association.

It wasn’t someone else.

I attended Larry Constantine‘s tutorial titled Breakthrough Design: Innovation That Works for Users. When learning from the “big names” I always look forward to real stories and insight that only experience brings. Larry didn’t disappoint. He’s also a great speaker.

He touched on innovation and then plunged into design topics such as techniques to break away from preconceptions and frames of reference and using abstraction to your advantage. The remainder of the day covered what makes a good interface and how users learn novel interactions. There was, of course, the obligatory hands-on design exercises. As a refreshing change, we worked on real design problems tutorial participants’ were facing at work. Read the rest of this entry »

I always learn something new at conferences, even if it’s not directly related to the conference theme.  Scott Kincaid, a Texan, and I were chatting and he asked me what I thought “don’t mess with texas” meant.  I said something like you shouldn’t attack Texas or they’ll kick your ass.  Another conference goer said something similar.
It turns out that the phrase is part of an anti-litter campaign launched in the 80′s! Who knew?

Weather is the bane of air travel. My 2.5 hour flight extended itself to almost 4 hours in the air due to storms around Denver. Add a 40 minute departure delay to that and you have a pretty long trip for such a short distance.

The guy wearing the “I (heart) to Fart” shirt at the airport made it all worthwhile, though. (Who would wear something like that in public?!)

I think the Denver airport is one of the worst airports I’ve ever visited. First, there’s the train you must take to get to the terminals. It was packed and the herd got bottlenecked a number of times. The ground transportation story is also very confusing. I got my bag and then proceeded to look for a shuttle to the hotel but there was nothing in view from the baggage claim except the exit. I poked my head out there but none of the signs said “To your hotel” to me.

I called the hotel and they told me which shuttle company to find, so I searched for them. The map of the terminal was useless — there was no “you are here” label and there was something about it that confused this tired traveller. Anyway, it turned out that I walked right by the desks for these shuttle companies after getting off the train. Since my goal was to find my bag and I was stuck within a herd of people all doing the same, I didn’t even notice them.

What’s the worst airport you’ve passed through?

I’m heading to Denver for the UPA 2006 conference tomorrow. It’s my first UPA (Usability Professionals Association) conference and I hope it’s a good one. I hear these conferences are much more practioner-oriented than CHI which has historically been heavily academic (although, that is changing).

I’ll take my camera and hope that the higher-than-I’m-used-to-temperatures don’t keep me inside the entire time.

Remember when your parents told you not to let go of the balloon? Remember the feeling in your gut as you watched the balloon float away?

“Dad!”

Captured at Second Beach, Stanley Park. I added motion blur to an already blurry photo but I think the effect works.

It’s nice to see usability mentioned in the mainstream press. CNN’s article Making Cell Phones Simple is Hard is pretty good and I’m glad carriers are putting effort into making the phones easier to use.

One paragraph at the end doesn’t ring true (pardon the pun):

Charles Golvin of Forrester Research said a recent survey indicated few cellular customers choose a phone based on its usability, typically because they either don’t think there’s anything better or, like Bales in Kansas City, don’t think they need those services [voice recognition].

Even if some carriers or cell phone manufacturers start to offer more usable phones, how will this change? Consumers don’t get a chance to try before they buy. Demo phones aren’t live and the best you can do is determine if the phone is too small for your hand or not. I’m not even aware of cell phone reviews unless it’s a PDA-type device like a Blackberry or Treo. If there are reviews, I doubt the average Joe, who needs usability, is reading them.

The other complicating factor is the divide between carriers and cell phone makers. Usability is really only in the carrier’s interest as they must field the support calls and accept returned phones. The article seems to imply that they are working on making their network services better, but it’s unclear how they can directly improve the phone’s design.  Perhaps their influence is growing as usability goes main stream.
In related news, some small cell phone manufacturer is trying to improve phone usability by, get this, stripping away all the fluff.  Imagine that, a phone that’s just a phone.  (Hat tip to Mark Hurst at Good Experience for that link.)

It’s been a tough week. I don’t think it’s appropriate to go into detail here, but suffice it to say that some tough medical decisions were made and I hope Kim’s grandfather is on a path to recovery. I will have to write more about him later as he’s had quite a distinguished career. He’s a metallurgical engineer and has worked on projects ranging from aircraft design for Douglas to the [Apollo program](http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/history/apollo/apollo.htm) to [cold fusion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion).

As a reward to myself, I bought an [Apple MacBook](http://www.apple.com/macbook/). So far, so good. It’s great. The screen is vibrant and the reflective coating is more than tolerable. Since this is just a toy, I went for the white 1.83 GHz model with the base configuration. We are now officially a dual-OS household. Once I download [Bootcamp](http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/), we’ll be a dual-boot household, too!

It feels a little silly to take pleasure in such a material thing, but after thinking hard about the meaning of life it’s a welcome change.

I’m in southern California to visit with Kim’s grandfather and try to bring some focus to a very confused situation. My short glimpse into hospital care (and I don’t think this is specific to US health care) is pretty scary. The synopsis: If you are an elderly patient who’s a little confused due to pain medication and infection, pray to God that you have a family member at your bedside to help you through that difficult time.

For those of you with kids, this is when you want to cash in on all your “honor thy father and mother” points and hope your kids are up to the task.

Happy Honda is a car dealer in Vancouver. Here’s their logo:

I saw it on the back of a car and, because it was just chromed plastic, it looked more like this:

I’ll make it a little more obvious:

I’m not a conspiracy theorist by nature, but that’s just creepy.

I’m very excited about the new Apple MacBooks. They look great and the price is good, too. However, I must admit the first look at its keyboard dredged up memories of IBM’s chicklet keyboard that shipped with the PCjr. I can still remember trying to type on the stupid thing. I think it was the first (and last) keyboard specifically designed for hunt-and-peck typists. Scott should remember this well as he actually had one of these things as a kid.

The good news is that the early reviews of the keyboard are mostly positive and it doesn’t appear to be the ergonomic disaster IBM unleashed on the market.

Kim’s grandfather, Joe (Yosef Eliezar ben Rachel), is in the hospital and things aren’t looking good. Please take a minute to say a prayer or think good thoughts (whatever your way is).