Jun
29
A chance encounter with a UPS service clerk yesterday, led me to an unbelievable and astounding discovery, but before I get ahead of myself let’s start at the beginning:
I received an XBOX 360 Elite from my daughter for Christmas last year (2007); the whole family loves it and we are all somewhat addicted to Rock Band. I had hoped that by opting for the “Elite” version of the XBOX that I would be getting a newer and better tested design, thus avoiding the “red-ring of death” problems that plagued so many people. After five months of light use (about once or twice a week) I noticed that the XBOX would sometimes freeze up, especially when starting up. When this happened the screen would freeze the picture and no fumbling with the controller would help. To unfreeze it, I would have to unplug the system from the power outlet, wait a few minutes, and then plug it back in. This would solve the problem and we would continue on with our game.
Over the course of the last 30 days this problem happened about seven times, and then suddenly last week it froze every time I started the system. The XBOX would randomly stop at some point in the boot sequence, and the screen would just freeze solid. After trying to restart the system about 15 times, I searched on the internet for “XBOX Screen Freezes” and found that Microsoft has a page dedicated to the issue.
I tried everything in the article to solve the issue, before determining that it wasn’t going to be fixed by me; I needed have my XBOX repaired. I called the XBOX support line, and was walked through a series of questions intended to diagnose whether or not I had a real problem. At the end of the process I was told that they would ship a box to me in order to package my XBOX and send back with a postage-paid shipping label.
I received the unmarked, white box within two days and dutifully packaged my system for shipping, including the prepaid UPS shipping label. While running some errands I stopped into the local UPS store to drop it off. As I walked into the store the woman behind the counter looked up and before I had a chance to utter a word she said “XBOX?”
I laughed and said “Yes, do you get a lot of these?”
Her reply astonished me: “We average about sixteen-a-day.”
I do not live in a dense urban area (there are only 45,000 households within 5-miles of this UPS according to 2000 census data) and there are at least 7 other UPS drop off locations within that radius as well. Some quick math: Total US Households = 105 Million and Total US XBOX 360 Sales = 10 Million. That means that about 1 in every 10 households have an XBOX, or in other words, there are about 4,500 XBOX’s within 5 miles of this UPS store.
Even though there are at least 7 other drop off locations near here, let’s assume that this store gets one-half of all the broken XBOX shipments in the area, because it is in a good location. That means that 32 of 4,500 XBOXs are failing and being shipped back daily. For the mathematically challenged, that would mean that about 70,000 XBOXs are failing EVERY DAY! At that rate, Microsoft would need to service every single XBOX over about a six month period.
Even if you assume that my numbers are an order of magnitude (10x) off of reality (due to some unique demographic in Mason, OH), that would still mean that they are servicing at least 25% of the installed base of systems every year, and that does not account for many, many systems that were purchased and used too infrequently to encounter an issue.
How can a blunder of this magnitude escape the eyes of the press and investment community? Why is no one reporting this? I can only surmise that the efficiency of Microsoft in dealing with the issue has mitigated any negatives with regard to the massive number of failures. What did Microsoft do right?
- Efficient, friendly and apologetic tech support.
- Postage paid shipping with packing materials (they even included the box tape).
- Fast repair and shipment back to the customer.
I can’t imagine that dealing with these issues in a fast and efficient manner has been cost effective for Microsoft, but the alternative would have been console suicide. The few people I have heard talk about this are praising them for doing the “right thing”, but I find it hard to give Microsoft points for doing what is necessary to save their business; I can’t imagine what they would have done with this problem if they had a monopoly in the console business as they do in operating systems.
What does all this mean? Did anyone lose their job over this? Do we think that Microsoft will learn from this and emerge a better hardware company at the end? Is this a harbinger of Microsoft’s death and does this mean that Dvorak was right? I would love to know what you think.
Jun
18
This evening, I watched the replay of Tim Russert’s memorial service on MSNBC. There were many laughs during the course of the service, and several times that I was brought to the point of tears. This surprised me because while I certainly was a fan of Russert, I did not know him personally and never even met the man. Never the less, the passion and love that the speakers felt for Russert came across in powerfully in their eloquent eulogies.
Pondering on the power of eloquent speech to invoke emotion made me immediately think about the charge that Hillary Clinton and John McCain have tried to create that Barack Obama is all speech and no substance. This naïve and simplistic characterization of Obama is a microcosm of the fundamental issue at stake in American public policy. The simple fact is that the American people have, over the course of the last four decades, surrendered the reins of our participatory democracy to multi-national corporations who fund propaganda campaigns that we call American politics.
At this turning point in history, we desperately need a visionary leader who can leverage the power of honesty, intelligence and eloquence to evoke the emotion necessary to get the American people out from behind their TVs and into the public square to discourse with each other on what type of role this country will have in shaping our own future and the future of the world.
It is important to remember that the world was at an equally precipitous point 68 years ago today; three days after Paris fell to the Germans, Winston Churchill grasped that moment in history to address the House of Commons, the English people and the world:
“What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.
Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”
Listen to an exerpt from Churchill’s “Finest Hour” Speech (1.4mb)
Churchill’s eloquence at this moment of crisis for the world, changed the course of human events. I hope that the American people rise above the base emotions of hate and fear to elect an equally eloquent leader that can ignite the fundamental fairness, spirit and energy of the American people in a way that would make Tim Russert proud.
Jun
18
Clicks to Cliques
Filed Under Social Media, Trends, Web | 1 Comment
It should be of no surprise that on twitter very close knit groups of people band together who have similar interests (e.g. friends, work colleagues, etc.), because twitter was designed to allow social groups to stay on top of what each other are doing. What intrigues me are the public cliques that form dynamically from people who have similar interests.
In my own effort to gain a twitter following, I have surfed twitter profiles by clicking on profiles of people I know and looking at who my friends are following on twitter. If those people look interesting (e.g. Interesting twitter posts or a good blog) I follow them and then click through to people that they follow and do the same thing. The act of doing this has led me to find several distinct groups of like-minded individuals who form what I call a twitter clique.
There are some obvious cliques like the Tech Podcasters (Laporte , Scoble, Veronica, et al), the Web 2.0 crowd (Rose, Calacanis, Arrington) and pro bloggers like Joy Wang, May Woo and Erica O’Grady. There are a lot of people who simply use Twitter for self promotion and there is a big clique of book authors who take every opportunity to pimp their next signing and tell us about how their current projects are going. However, the most interesting cliques are very unexpected like the 120+ people who follow the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (Roller Derby). I have found that Cliques can swarm around any subject and don’t seem to be limited to one social cast, for example I cannot image more diverse groups than work at home moms (Mommye), adult cam girls (Stacie Adams) and Obamamainians (Barack Obama).
It surprised me at first that most of the self organizing groups have formed around women or issues that are important to women, but then I realized that most men who are early adopters of technology are generally introverted geeks; therefore the early adopter women became the driving force behind clique swarms like raw food evangelists (emilyraw, 1rawgirl), Expat ESL teachers (Mleec), and wannabe actors who are always off on auditions. Eventually, I think that marketers will pay a lot of money to mine conversations of these cliques to better understand and market to specific demographics, but for right now I just am enjoying the conversation.
Your Turn
I am sure that the 500+ people that I am following just barely scratch the surface of the many cliques that intersect on twitter and other social media sites, what are some of the unique clique swarms that you have discovered?
May
22
I have arrived?
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
I was just cleaning up some spam comments left on bovak.com and was getting a little annoyed. Then I realized that I WAS GETTING SPAM COMMENTS. This is a watershed moment for bovak.com; this validates me as a blogger: I am now worthy of the spammers taking time to post virus laden Cialis spam on my site.
Please don’t burst my bubble by pointing out that the spammers are probably using automated scripts and that all this really means is that some web crawler found my site, I already know. Just let me bask briefly in the glory of my new found celebrity.
May
10
Two companies that I will not do business with
Filed Under Gadgets, Travel, consumerism | Leave a Comment
Nothing gets under my skin more that poor customer service, and this week I had two experiences so frustrating that I am very likely never to do business with those companies again.
First was with Brookstone. I recently changed roles within my company and there were many cake and card parties as well as some parting gifts etc. The gift fad this year seems to be small digital picture frames. I received three of these after having bought one for myself at Christmas time. Being the gadget hound that I am I knew that people thought these would be the perfect gift for me. I accepted all of them graciously and thanked everyone for being thoughtful, but two months later the gifts were still unopened.
This week I had to run to the mall for something and thought to return these items for store credit, in order to buy a mother’s day gift. When I get to the store the clerk informed me that they “can’t do anything for me”, because I don’t have a receipt. I explained that they were gifts and I didn’t have a receipt. I also pointed out that they were brand new, unopened Brookstone branded products, and that they were actively selling these exact models for Mother’s day.
No dice. Brookstone would not take back unopened, Brookstone branded merchandise for store credit. This makes no sense to me; I was not asking for money back; I was not trying to return something purchased at another store. All they accomplished is to piss me off and send me somewhere else to buy my mother’s day gift. I am also fairly certain that I will never buy gifts for anyone at that store ever again.
I left from the mall to the Airport for a business trip. I was planning on attending The New Yorker Conference on Thursday and then had business meeting in New Jersey on Friday. I decided to stay at the Hyatt Regency in New Brunswick, NJ, because I was taking a late flight and the Hyatt is within walking distance of a NJ Transit station. The plan was perfect: I could take the train into the city on Thursday while leaving the car at the Hotel and then return via train Thursday night for my meetings in Jersey on Friday.
There was only one problem. The New Brunswick Hyatt didn’t honor my reservation. When I showed up at 12:30 in the morning, the hotel clerk informed me that “a computer error caused them to overbook the rooms and they didn’t have a room for me.” Instead, they offered me a free hotel room at the Somerset Plaza Hotel which is 15min away. I tried to explain that the reason I was staying at this hotel was the proximity to the train and that my company pays for the room so a free nights stay doesn’t really mean anything to me. She obviously had given this speech several times this evening and was callous to my concerns and inconvenience.
By the time I found the Somerset Plaza Hotel (a horrible old hotel that is run down and poorly staffed) and checked into my room it was 1:30 in the morning. Making casual conversation with the desk clerk, I discovered that this “computer error” happens several times a week and that the Hyatt is always sending disgruntled guests to them in the middle of the night.
Even though I travel more than 100 nights a year, not doing business with Hyatt ever again doesn’t seem to me to be sufficient penalty for them, anyone have suggestions on how I can best inconvenience them to the extent (okay three times the extent) that they inconvenienced me?
Apr
23
Open Letter to the Obama Campaign:
After a disappointing ten point loss in Pennsylvania and a lackluster speech this evening, I believe that Senator Obama needs a new strategy to simplify his message and present it in a way that everyone can understand the difference between his candidacy and Senator Clintons. Two points he needs to make:
- The economy is bad, lost jobs, weak dollar, huge national debt and mortgage crisis that is affecting the financial markets.
- The war is bad, people dying, reducing our ability to get Bin Laden and costing us billions of dollars that could have been used to solve (or would have prevented financial crisis) instead these billions go to large corporations.
Politicians have been manipulating the american people with fear tactics to keep our attention away from these two issues, but the fact remains that we are where we are because of special interests in politics.
Explain in no uncertain terms that the fundamental issue with our government is that in order to get elected and stay elected that you need to raise millions of dollars to run your campaign. The easiest way to get access to this kind of money is to use the lobbyists to find/organize campaign donors. Because of this the politicians that take this special interest money must then act to the benefit of the special interest or risk losing that donation for their next campaign.
The DIFFERENCE between Obama and Clinton is not lapel pins or nuances of the healthcare plan, but where the money to run her campaign came from and how that will affect her judgement to do something right for the american people or something that benefits the campaign donor. Because Obama has a donation base of 20MM people, large corporations will not have any special influence on an Obama presidency, and hopefully the clear mandate that he will be elected on will allow him to enact sweeping campaign finance reform as well.
Finally, make the connection that once we take the large corporate money out of politics, there will be no reason/benefit for legislators on either side of the aisle (with the exception of corruption) to enact laws that benefit corporations over the general people. That freedom will then allow the government to fix healthcare, education, the mortgage crisis and yes even the war.
So simply follow the money. It is unfortunate but people need a common enemy, the enemy in this case should be Large Corporations that take jobs out of the country and who pour money into lobbyists and special interests in order to bias the tax code and other laws/policies. Tell people in detail how the money of politics effects legislation (really tell people how bad it is). The best part about this, is that the same arguments will also work against McCain, so in essence you will be showcasing to Democrats that may have doubts about Obama’s electability a blueprint to beat McCain in the fall.
I know that Obama has been talking about these issues, but he speaks of them at a 50,000 foot level. He needs to connect the dots (follow the money issue to the individuals pocket) and show how big business is the enemy we need to be paying attention to.
Eddie
p.s. One more thing, either get rid of the Teleprompter or practice it more, your starting to come off a little robotic.
Apr
18
Did I do enough?
Filed Under Travel, Trends | 3 Comments
This post chronicles my recent efforts to help a woman who was sitting next to me on an international flight who fell for a new scheme targeting older single women. The post is a little long, but I think it is important to tell this story in its entirety to ensure that others don’t fall for these cons in the future.
I flew over to the UK last Sunday on business, I was only staying one day in London and then going on to Brussels. Thankfully, my company pays for business class seats on international flights, and this was no exception. In business class, the people you sit next to are usually (as the name implies) other frequent flying business travelers who are not paying for their own ticket and in general pretty savvy about travel.
Therefore, I was a little surprised when I got to my seat and saw that the woman sitting next to me was prominently wearing a badge that identified her as an airline employee. She wasn’t in uniform though, her badge was hanging from a heart shaped brooch which was attached to a conservative, black embroidered jacket. It didn’t look comfortable or stylish and was definitely not something you would want to travel in (it looked like she was in her church clothes). She was in her late forties or early fifties, a little overweight and had the speech patterns & mannerisms of a typical Midwest rural/suburban housewife. She was travelling alone though, which meant she was probably divorced late in life with limited job skills and landed on her feet as a flight attendant.
This woman had intense interest in my unpacking routine (computer, magazines, iPod, etc.), to the point where it unnerved me a bit, like she was judging me. I know that everyone sizes up the person who they are going to be sitting next to for seven hours, but its usually more discreet. A little light banter as I was organizing my seat confirmed that she was a flight attendant who was flying standby in order to visit London for a few days. I quickly settled down into the seat and made myself busy: checked my voicemail, made some last minute phone calls, and finally pulled out my blackberry to get a twitter fix before they closed the boarding door.
As I was scrolling through messages, she turned to me and said “Is this your first time?”
The difference in our ages and her body language told me that this was not flirtatious banter, but a sincere question. I was slightly put out that she hadn’t picked up on my whole frequent traveler vibe, so in the most casual tone I could muster I said “no, no, I have been over to Europe many times,” then casually went back to twitter without asking her if it was her first time. I just assumed it wasn’t, since she was a flight attendant.
After a short period of time, I could sense her still staring at me, so I turned to look and she blurted out “AREN’T YOU SO EXCITED!” When my eyes met hers I could genuinely see the excitement in her face, she was the proverbial kid in a candy store, wide-eyed and grinning ear to ear. This was not a typical world traveling flight attendant.
I had the sudden realization that she wasn’t judging me, but instead just living for the moment and taking in the whole experience of flying for the first time in business class: free mimosas, noise cancelling headsets and everyone sending email on their Blackberry. When this dawned on me, I immediately dropped any pretence of savvy aloofness that I was trying to portray and started a conversation with (lets call her Betty). Betty and I exchanged some pleasantries and then she proceeded to pepper me with questions about London, non-stop, for 90 minutes. Here is an abbreviated list:
“Do they have different money over there?”
“Are there a lot of single people over there?”
“Do they dress funny?”
“I heard that they drive on the other side of the road.”
“I think it would be exciting to marry someone from another country.”
“Big Ben, what’s that? Is that near the parly-mint house?”
“What do they do there? Can you go in?” (in reference to Buckingham Palace)
“Why do their police officers wear funny clothes?”
“I really like their accents over there.”
“What happens when you marry someone from another country, where do you live?”
“It is safe there, right? I heard that the police officers don’t even carry guns.”
“Do they really have vaults or safes where they keep money?” (I thought she was referring to hotel safes at first)
“How much money do people make over there?”
“I really want to go to a pub, but I hear they drink warm beer”
“I think it would be exciting to move to another country, don’t you?”
“What type of music do they listen to over there?”
“What is a subway? Is that the same as ‘The Tube’, and what is the Underground?”
“My friend met someone from London on the Internet.”
“I heard that you shouldn’t wear bright colors over there because people will know that you are a tourist.”
“How much does a beer cost over there?”
“Can I open a bank account over there?”
I started to say “Why… ” but then my spidey-sense just went off like a fire alarm.
- She asked some questions that told me that she was completely naïve about life outside the Midwest.
- She had asked a lot of questions that she already had an answer for, just to verify what she had heard.
- She didn’t really have a plan of what she was going to see or do while in London.
- She had asked many, many money related questions. (more than what’s above)
- She asked a lot of questions about the possibility of getting married to a Londoner and the consequences of that.
- Then bank account question…
I asked “Betty, have you ever received an email from someone who needs your help to get access to a large amount of money?”
She had an astonished look on her face for a long 5-10 seconds, then she recovered and after a considered pause she said “Yes, but not me, it was my friend, I told her that I would check him out for her since I was coming over.”
I nodded, then paused myself for a good five minutes (longer than I should have), while I was weighing the pros and cons on interjecting myself into this situation. I finally decided that I couldn’t in good conscious just let her walk off the plane into the perpetrators hands; I needed to convince her not to do this. The problem was that she told me it was her ‘friend’ and I decided to let her save face in that regard. Due to the deception, I had to craft what I said and the questions I asked without announcing the fact that I knew it was really Betty that was in the center of this. It took quite a bit of time before we got to the heart of the matter.
The long and short of it was that her ‘friend’ had received a series of emails from someone she met on a dating site. The gentleman in question was self-described as a middle-aged divorcee who attended church and had a 12 year-old daughter. He apparently had a good deal of money locked up in a vault that was in both his and his wife’s name. Coincidentally his wife’s name was also Betty, and since they had gotten so close (via email), he proffered that maybe if they got married she would be able to present herself as the estranged wife in order to access the money. The two of them could then live happily ever-after in the UK, where the policemen wear funny hats, the people talk with funny accents and you pay for things with funny looking money.
Betty was very, very sweet, but for sake of completeness I must point out that she was conversing with me on the same level as my daughter (when my daughter was 8); and although she was a flight attendant, she only worked for a small regional airline and traveled to places like Milwaukee, Buffalo and North Carolina. She had never been to New York or Chicago let alone out of the country. After a while she warmed up to the possibility that this guy wasn’t on the up and up, but thought that she could manage the situation by agreeing to only meet him in a public place. She rationalized that if he turned out to be fictitious or if he asked for money she could walk away, and what did she have to lose?
In order build some credibility I resorted to my own little white lie, telling her I was a computer security expert, and relayed details of some 419 scams that I have read about. It took me the better part of two hours to convince her that she should absolutely not attempt to meet this guy under any circumstance. I also told her to have her ‘friend’ end all email and voice communication with this person. To reassure myself that she would be okay, I verified that she was staying at a reputable bed and breakfast, gave her my Rick Steve’s London guide, and helped her pick out what sights to see for the three days that she was in the city (I wanted to make sure that she didn’t have any down time). After we got off the plane I helped her buy her tickets (train from Gatwick and & 3-Day Zone-1 travel card) and get through customs. After she spoke to the customs agent she told me that they asked her a bunch of questions:
“Where are you staying?”
“Are you meeting anyone here?”
“What’s the purpose of your visit?”
All typical customs questions, but she wondered if “they knew.” When I saw her off on the express to Victoria Terminal, she gave me her assurance that she would not attempt to meet this guy, and I took her at her word.
However, it is now Friday and I am on the flight back to the States, the seat next to me is eerily empty. Betty was not coming back on this flight (she was planning to go back Wednesday or Thursday, but the empty seat next to me makes me wonder what happened. Did she take my advice? Was there more I could have done? I obviously couldn’t follow her around London, but should I have alerted the authorities? Did I do enough? I hope I did, what do you think?
Apr
14
My Hope Was Dashed – Part II
Filed Under Gadgets | 2 Comments
I was finally able to complete my review of the Dash Navigator GPS, because the customer service team at Dash was kind enough to send me out a replacement device two days after I managed to make the first one useless.
Since the time of that first post, Jason Calacanis mentioned on his blog that he thought the Dash was going to be the best product of 2008. I agree that it has the potential to be the best product of the year, but I think that it falls short in several areas; so much so that I am debating on whether or not to return to my TomTom 700 until they upgrade the software.
In many ways the Dash reminds me of myself in Jr. High School; I can still hear principal Zimmerman telling my Mom that I was not living up to my potential, and that greatness was within my reach if I were to just apply myself. I wish I had the guts at the time to point out that principal Z was not taking the world by storm either, and that the whole principal gig was (in my opinion) just a way to work out his latent homosexual and sadomasochistic tendencies (he kept six wooden paddles in his office and often had a line of boys outside his door waiting to be disciplined). The Dash (like 14yo Eddie) has boundless potential, but the current implementation leaves something to be desired.
On the potential front, the Dash combines a portable (dashboard or windshield mount) touch screen GPS unit with a built-in wifi and cellular radio networking capabilities. This means that as long as you are in range of a cell-tower that your dash can send and receive data via the tubes. Dash has used these capabilities to deliver some innovative features:
- Web Search. In the same way that Google Maps on my blackberry will allow me to search Google for addresses and display them on a map, Dash will let you search Yahoo while you’re in the car for the nearest Borders or Starbucks. (no more searching on my phone and then re-typing the address into my GPS).
- Real Traffic. Since all the Dash units are networked they can upload recent data about their speed to a central server in order to alert other drivers to traffic delays. Actual road conditions can then be used to choose the fastest route and provide more accurate ETA to the driver.
- Send to GPS. The network connectivity can be used to send an individual address, lists of addresses or searches from the my.dash.net website to your GPS so you don’t have to spend time manually typing in the addresses or searches on the touch screen.
- Updates. Network connectivity also means that my Dash can dial home to receive software updates and map updates can be pushed down so your map is always up to date (theoretically). In practice I found that the map is less up to date than my recently updated TomTom 700 North America map.
That’s it? That’s all you could do with this? Let me see if I can come up with a few ideas on how to use this:
- Show me other dash users who are near me, or at least show me where my friends/family are.
- Allow me to point out where a radar trap is, so I can alert other drivers.
- Allow me to send sms or email to my GPS and have it read the message out loud. (can anyone say twitter radio)
- Um, how about a satellite or ground level view of my destination (my phone can do that).
- Track my driving and let me look at it on a map or download the mileage for expense reporting.
- Send a “meet me here” message to my friends, or an SOS message to 911
- Call/msg the phone associated with my destination and let them know I am going to be late because of traffic.
- Send my reminder or to do list to the device and let me check it off as I am running my errands
- Allow me to get rid of the yearly subscription fee (and the cost of the device) by allowing it to be an ad platform for local businesses. Even send digital coupons to the device.
- Send a text message with an address to the device.
[Gratuitous pleas for comments: What do you think, how could this combination of technologies be used?]
I genuinely like the hardware for the most part, the screen is large and easy to read, the mounting arm works very well and comes with parts to extend its reach if necessary, and the GPS receiver was excellent. However, there are some minor hardware issues that I found:
- It is somewhat oddly shaped (it looks like an upside down “L” from the side) and can’t stand up on its own. Why not put the “L” on the bottom so you can set it on the dashboard?
- On the top of the unit there is a speaker and two buttons (volume and menu), and every time I go to grab the unit, I end up accidentally clicking the volume button.
- The device has no microphone (for voice commands or to measure ambient noise), so the volume either has to be set annoyingly loud at slow speeds or inaudible at high speeds.
- The device has a mini USB port, but it doesn’t act as a storage device when you connect it to a computer, instead it creates an IP network (it is a linux based device so I suspect that you can connect to the console via SSH through the link, but I haven’t tried).
- The cigarette lighter power cord can’t connect to the Dash unit itself, it connects to the mounting arm, which is good because you can remove the GPS without disconnecting the power. However, this also means that if you want to take your dash with you in a rental car you need to bring the mounting arm with you (kind of annoying to pack that).
Software
The hardware issues are more annoyances that anything else, but the software limitations are much more serious. To start with, all of the navigation on the Dash is address based; this means that you can’t navigate anywhere that doesn’t have an address (or to an address you might not know). Why not allow me to find a place on a map and send the lat/long to the device as a way point? This also means that even if you know that the geocoding for a particular address is incorrect, you can’t change it, the software doesn’t even allow you to save or mark your current location (major downside for me).
Another major software issue for me is the lack of information while driving. The austere display only shows distance to next turn, my car icon, a small compass, and one of the following: current time, ETA, distance to destination (you have to touch the screen to toggle through the three choices, which I think is a safety issue). Don’t get me wrong, I love simple clean design, and I am sure that for many people this will meet their needs, but god-damn-it I am a gadget freak and a geek, and the GPS is my cockpit HUD. Why would you not allow me some options to add information to the display? This GPS is designed to help me navigate around traffic, 90% of the time I will know where I am going, what I want to see on the screen is a stream of data so I feel like a pilot. Here are things that are missing off of my display:
- How fast am I driving (yes I have a speedometer, but I like to see it in my HUD).
- Compass heading in degrees
- Altitude
- Time to destination
- Distance to destination / ETA / Current Time (at the same time)
- How good is my satellite fix or how many satellites am I fixed to.
Routing is another area that has potential, but needs work. When you initially plot a destination address the Dash provides you with up to three possible routes and shows the distance and estimated time for each route. I like this feature, but the number of route choices is often one, and when there are multiple routes shown there they often overlap each other to a high degree. I would like the ability to tell the dash to avoid a particular highway or to drive through a city on my way somewhere. That brings up another annoyance, there are no waypoints, all navigation is point to point.
The reliance on the Dash to recognize that you need to be rerouted is troublesome. If you are confronted with a road closure, there is no way to prompt the Dash around it. You just need to start driving in a random direction and wait till it re-routes you, and even in that case it might tell you to make a u-turn and go back the way you came.
The minimalist interface extends to all aspects of the UI, and there are very few configurable options. For example, there is no preference to set what speed you typically drive on what type of road (I drive 75-80 on the freeway, so the routing should be biased more heavily toward freeway travel). I applaud the designer’s choice to keep the UI simple, but that doesn’t mean that you eliminate configuration, just bury the stuff that you think most users would not want to tinker under the “geek menu.”
I know that this review is almost entirely negative, but I had such high expectations for the device that I was utterly devastated when I discovered that it was crippled by its software. Since I already sunk $500 into the device and service plan, I will try to keep using it in hopes that one day I will get a software update that addresses some of the key problems. Until then I would recommend that you wait and see what some of the other players in this space do with similar technology.
Apr
12
Is voicemail spam a new trend?
Filed Under Trends | 5 Comments
I received a call while I was on the road last night that I twittered about. The interesting thing about this VM was that is was an obvious spam message. The caller “Judy” said that she noticed that I was searching on “money-making” opportunities on the internet and that I needed to go out to www.thebestonlinesystem.com immediately to take advantage of the opportunity before it was gone. If you don’t believe me listen to it yourself.
I always get unwanted phone solicitations after trade-shows, but this is the first time I have ever received a phone call where the call to action was to visit a website. I can imagine that the convergence of cheap programmable VOIP solutions and affiliate marketing programs will make this type of advertising common place, or maybe it already is and I am just behind the curve: http://mashable.com/2008/04/01/pingercast/
Apr
8
Are my thoughts noteworthy?
Filed Under Gadgets, writing | 2 Comments
Remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine had a limited supply of contraceptive sponges, and she had to judge whether or not her date was “Sponge Worthy”?
I was browsing through a writers store and came across a Rhodia Meeting Book; essentially it is an orange spiral-bound notebook with preprinted pages to capture meeting notes that costs $20 Dollars (yes I said TWENTY).
I love notebooks and I am always on the look out for cool new ones, so I didn’t even look at the price assuming it would be in the $8-12 range. When I brought it up to the counter and it was rung up, I did a double-take at the total, but I was too embarrassed to put my AMEX back in my pocket. The store clerk noticed my flinch and gave me a holier than thou look, so I bought two (that taught him a lesson).
I am a little worried now that using this notebook might constrain my creativity. Every time I go to write something in it, will I stop and judge whether or not my thought at the moment is “Note Worthy”? Only time will tell, but for safety I think I will slip a few pages of loose leaf paper in the back of the notebook, just in case.