reDesign

Some interesting stories from the last couple of weeks:

• Penny Dreadful (New Yorker) — Please, please let’s kill the penny already. It’s one of the nuisances of everyday life. Aside from Lincolnphiles and the companies that make money selling zinc to the government, who really wants these things? “Breaking stride to pick up a penny, if it takes more than 6.15 seconds, pays less than the federal minimum wage.” Anti-penny crusader Jeff Gore was on The Colbert Report last week. Obama, from the Land of Lincoln, would “seriously consider” getting rid of the penny. At least in Illinois you can use the penny in toll booths.
• GPS brings business to small town (Pekin Times) — A while back, I wrote about the potential of GPS to change the way we find businesses on road trips. This story from a small town newspaper talks about a small business that is seeing increased business from GPS users. Some of the key facts in the story are wrong, but the story is cute nonetheless. via GPS Tracklog
• Senate bill has plenty for home builders (Marketplace) - The big scandal in American politics isn’t that money can buy influence; it’s how little money it takes to buy that influence. In an unusually blunt display of force, the National Association of Home Builders announced in February that they would stop making campaign contributions, saying that Congress and the Bush administration “have not adequately addressed the underlying economic issues that would help to stabilize the housing sector and keep the economy moving forward.”
  The Senate, feeling the threat to their campaign piggy banks in a critical election year, responded with $6 billion in retroactive tax breaks for the builders. Yes, that’s $6 billion of our money going to the same people who helped exacerbate the housing bubble and subsequent pop through endless hype, captive finance arms which steered people into unsuitable loans and overbuilding. Since January 2007, the homebuilders have given $961,650 to campaigns with 46% going to Democrats and 54% going to Republicans. Let’s see, that’s a 624,000% ROI.
• Nats home opener - Jon has a great collection of pictures and a review from the opening of Nationals Park. One of my favorites is below.

Some interesting reads from the last few weeks:

• Wall St. Journal Makes Politics Its Business (Washington Post) - Media critic Howard Kurtz takes an in-depth look at changes at the Wall Street Journal since its takeover by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The biggest change is the increase in political coverage amid one of the most interesting political campaigns in recent history. The Journal, a rarity among newspapers, is increasing its news hole thanks to its new benefactor. via Howard Kurtz
• Steered Wrong: Drivers Trust GPS Even to a Fault (WSJ) - For all their convenience, portable navigation devices and online mapping still have one big problem: the world’s road network is constantly changing and digital mappers can’t keep pace. Some countries in Europe even have signs at tricky intersections telling drivers to ignore their GPS’ instructions. Yet many drivers put their faith in technology and blindly follow their GPS’ instructions. Perhaps this is because their accuracy is oversold; a TomTom TV ad (see below) shows a couple driving across a bridge during the ribbon cutting ceremony. The typical map on a PND is a year old the day you take it out of the box. via Doris Truong
• Eating away the innings in baseball’s cheap seat (USA Today) - What’s more American than baseball and Cracker Jacks? Possibly stuffing yourself silly. Faced with anemic attendance, some teams have come up with a new way to generate revenue: all-you-can-eat sections where you can eat all the hot dogs, french fries and soda you can stomach. At the Braves’ Turner field, the “typical all-you-can-eat customer downed: 3.35 hot dogs; one 20-ounce soda; one 7.9-ounce bag of peanuts; one 3-ounce order of nachos and 32 ounces of popcorn.” In unrelated news, the average seat at the Mets’ new Citi Field is 21 inches wide, 2 inches wider than those at Shea.
• IRS making sure your rebate gets spent (Marketplace) - One of the big concerns about the “economic stimulus” package is that people will do something silly with it — like save it or use it to pay down debt. I suggested that the rebates be issued as VISA debit cards. Apparently the IRS is using lifestyle analysis to determine what taxpayers want and spending their $600 rebate checks for them. One couple received an air conditioner instead of the check they were expecting.

I’ve been using my Garmin eTrex Vista Cx GPS for six months. I use it when hiking and to geotag pictures. I noticed that I haven’t been getting the advertised accuracy level; the accuracy has ranged from 25 to 150 feet.

The Garmin Web site touts the benefits of WAAS:

A WAAS-capable receiver can give you a position accuracy of better than three meters 95 percent of the time. And you don’t have to purchase additional receiving equipment or pay service fees to utilize WAAS.

What a deal! You just don’t get that out of the box — Garmin defaults WAAS to off. Once I turned it on, accuracy improved to 8 to 10 feet.

Garmin isn’t alone in shipping crippled products; many of the products and services we use come to us less than advertised. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Money. Computer manufacturers such as SONY and Dell lard up PCs with crapware like toolbars, trial versions of antivirus software and offers for broadband access. Companies like AOL, Google and McAfee pay for this distribution. It’s the price of cheap PCs. SONY recently received a lot of bad press for offering a “Fresh Start” option, which allowed consumers to buy select laptops without crapware for a $50 premium.
• Shelf appeal. TV sets are preset to look good on the big, bright showroom floor. These settings aren’t optimal in a smaller, darker environment.
• Support costs. Despite the fact that they all touted security as a key feature on the box, every wireless router I’ve had has come with security turned off. This isn’t the right choice for most users, but it is the one that will work out of the box and is least likely to trigger expensive customer support calls.
• Server capacity and operational costs. Gmail offers all users the ability to use a secure version of email, but defaults to insecure. Just go to “https://mail.google.com” and your entire session will be encrypted. Or use the Better Gmail extension to always force an encrypted session.
• The right choice for the user. Sometimes default decisions are actually based on what most users would want. Things like language, time display format and currency symbols frequently fall into this category.

It’s hard to tell which of these apply in the Garmin case. Clearly, users wouldn’t prefer data that is more inaccurate, unless there was some downside to having more accurate data. I might take less accurate data if it meant I got more battery life in exchange. The Garmin owner’s manual is silent on this topic, although it does mention other factors that affect battery life such as backlight usage.

WAAS requires more computation, so maybe it makes the unit slower? Again, the owner’s manual is silent on this.

Garmin ignores the fundamental question I always ask when giving users a choice: does the user have the information necessary to make that choice? In this case, clearly not. There’s plenty of space on the Garmin’s screen (see picture below) to explain the impact of turning on WAAS.

Judging from a GPS-fan Web site, it looks like there’s no reason to turn it off:

On the current generation Garmins, there is no discernible impact on speed or battery life with WAAS on.

Which begs the question: if there’s no negative impact, why not have it always on and remove the option?

Disclosure: I was part of the team responsible for AOL Toolbar distribution on SONY PCs.

The Dash portable navigation device I wrote about earlier is now shipping. Dash has dropped the price $200 from the initial pre-order pricing.

It’s the first true two-way connected PND on the market, using cellular data for search, traffic and community features. Because I now work on automotive products, I’ll pass on reviewing it. The initial coverage from Walt Mossberg and The Washington Post are very positive. The Post story also goes into depth on how traffic services work.

• Dash’s Car Navigator Gives Smart Directions, If Others Participate (Mossberg)
• Beating Traffic By Joining the Network (Post)

The movers came today and loaded up all my stuff for the move West. I laughed out loud when I looked at the inventory and saw “paper eater” as the description for my shredder. And I think she packed the eaten but not digested paper, too.

The other amusing moment was when she stared at the Moviebeam and tried to describe it. I had to struggle to explain it, too. Relic destined for the trashbin of technological history?

Busy with CES and the new job this week, so I didn’t get to do a whole lot of reading. These caught my eye:

• CES Video: Gadget of the day (Los Angeles Times) - Taser has introduced a stun gun with an integrated MP3 player. The fashion (un?)conscious can get it in leopard print. Left unanswered is whether you can play tunes while you’re tasing someone. Maybe next year they’ll add a video screen so you can watch the “Don’t tase me bro” video while you tase someone.
  
• Autos becoming vibrant electronics hub (AP) - A big theme of CES, including a keynote by GM CEO Rick Wagoner, is the increasingly rapid integration of consumer electronics into the car. Audio, navigation and Internet technologies are rapidly converging in the car. Convergence seems to be happening faster on the car’s screen than the TV screen.
  This story was written by my college roommate, Brian Bergstein. I bumped into him while waiting in a cab line at The Venetian. Check out the rest of Brian’s great CES coverage.

The Post’s Rob Pegoraro has a story this week on two products I’ll never buy. One is the Samsung Jitterbug, a feature-free cellphone. The other is the HP Printing Mailbox. It connects to a regular telephone line and prints emails intended for the owner.

Don’t laugh too hard at that one; it’s not intended for you, either. While most products these days focus on adding as many features as possible to entice the young, these products are designed for older users who don’t want to learn all those features.

There are two versions of the Jitterbug. They both do one thing: make phone calls. You can’t text someone, browse the Web, play music, view pictures, watch TV, check email or get driving directions.

The simplest version, pictured above, does away with the 10-digit keypad and replaces them with three big buttons — 911, operator and a big custom buttons. (According to the Jitterbug Web site, “We’ll personalize the middle button for you before we ship your phone. Choose ‘Friend,’ ‘Home,’ ‘Tow,’ ‘Work,’ or ‘My Choice.’”) There’s also a menu of 10 speed dials. If you want to call someone else, you call the operator and he or she puts you through.

Ironically, many of the ads I saw while researching Jitterbug were for phones at the other end of the spectrum. The CNET video in the screenshot above is sponsored by Blackberry.

The Jitterbug has two big problems. It’s offered by an MVNO named GreatCall. MVNOs have had a tough time lately. One of the largest, Amp’d mobile, is likely to be shutting down next week.

The other is price. The phones cost $147 and the service is also premium priced. Features like unlimited nights and weekends and unlimited in-networking calling aren’t available. It only really makes sense if you rarely use the phone. It would be a much more compelling offer if you could add the phone to a family plan for a major carrier.

The HP Printing Mailbox from Presto is designed to print email and photos sent to an email address. In theory, you buy this printer for your parents, set it up and connect it to the phone line.

When you send them email, it gets printed out the next day. There’s no way to send an email back. (”Users do not have the cost and hassles of a computer and Internet account, and do not need to learn to send email or use a keyboard.”) They can call you (using a Jitterbug?) or write a letter. Only emails from approved email addresses are allowed. There’s also an option to subscribe to newsletters and articles from companies like Better Homes and Gardens and the Wall Street Journal.

Cost is an issue here, too. The printer costs $99 and the service is $10 a month. And then there’s the pricey HP ink cartridges.

The big problem I see with the HP Printing Mailbox is that it assumes a one-way relationship. To me, giving this to someone says “I don’t really care about you.” When I send an email to you with HP Printing Mailbox, I know you can’t email me back. It’s like calling someone’s work number at 9 p.m. hoping to get voicemail because you don’t really want to talk to them. There’s one opportunity for increased interaction: if you actually use the thing, you’ll probably have to visit every few months to change the ink cartridge.

But then again, I’m not the target market.

I made my visit to the Temple of Jobs yesterday, reaching the Apple store on Stockton Street about 9:30 p.m. The live van for the local NBC affiliate was parked outside waiting for the 11 p.m. newscast.

Inside, the store was relatively empty except for the big crowd around the iPhone display.

What was sparking the crowd? There were working iPhones set out on the counter.

Unlike most wireless carriers that put out dummy, nonfunctional phones, these were real. They were loaded with music, so you could test out the iPod features. You could use the Web browser. Watch videos on YouTube. You could even - gasp - make phone calls!

People were calling their friends — “Guess what, I’m calling you from the iPhone?” They waited patiently as the person in front of them explored the nuances. Every once in a while, someone would walk by proudly holding an iPhone bag.

Wireless carriers can learn a lot from Apple about launching products. Sure, most product launches won’t ever get the wall-to-wall media coverage that iPhone did. (Including a countdown the day before on CNBC ticking away the minutes until the iPhone launch.) But it’s a lot easier for people to get excited about a product when they can interact with it rather than have to imagine what it’s like.

Looking at my Facebook account today, there at least three people who reference having an iPhone, including one who “is worried her boyfriend loves his iPhone more than her.”

The next two years are going to bring big changes in television. Next month, the FCC is going to begin requiring cable companies to let users buy and connect their own cable boxes (instead of leasing them from the cable company). In February 2009, analog over-the-air broadcasts are set to end.

But after spending some time lately with Apple TV and TivoCast, I think the biggest changes are going to come from Internet delivery of content.

Television content has gone through a few transformations already, each leading to more and more niche content. With cable came 24-hour news, weather and sports networks, content that in most markets couldn’t profitably exist in the limited broadcast spectrum. Satellite brought additional capacity that made it profitable to serve smaller ethnic markets like Russians, Indians, Portugese and Ukranians. Tivo brought the ability to watch what you want when you want.

Now Internet TV allows users to get content that would never interest 10 thousand people, much less 10 million. I watch podcasts from CNET, Mobuzz, washingtonpost.com and others on my TV. Yesterday, I watched a 30 minute video of Eric Schmidt at the World Economic Forum on my Apple TV. I can’t imagine any TV network that would broadcast that.

Tivo’s Universal Swivel Search allows you to search across broadcast, cable and Internet content. A search for “LOST”, would theoretically return both the TV show and the podcast. You don’t even need to know where it is; it’ll just show up. (The big difference is that the Internet content will be available within a few minutes, but you’ll have to wait for the scheduled time for the broadcast and cable content.)

Launching a new television network isn’t easy. You have to negotiate for carriage with the three big cable companies, DirecTV and Dish. You’re competing with giants like Disney and Time Warner that can bundle their new channels with must-haves like ESPN and CNN. And, if you manage to get that far, you have to find content to fill the channel.

Internet television opens up the TV screen to anyone with a video camera and a Web server. Some content is already available in HD quality - I watch Mobuzz and washingtonpost.com in 720p. I can’t even get Comedy Central in HD on cable.

The one thing I still haven’t gotten used to is that programs vary in length. Freed from the conventions of television, shows go on as long as they need to. The same show can be 3 minutes one day and 10 minutes the next based on how much they have to say.

One of my big frustrations with navigation devices and online mapping services is that it can take months to more than a year for to get new roads added, closed roads deleted and errors corrected. Making changes required getting an update from map data providers. Roads that I drove on every day couldn’t be added to the map and routings on my Acura TL’s navigation system.

TomTom’s new MapShare promises to change that.

It’s the first system I know of that allows users to customize the map data. The changes you make can also be shared with others and you can download changes other TomTom users have made. There’s an option to download only verified changes.

The MapShare feature will be available on the TomTom GO 720, due out at the end of July. Among the goofier features in the 720: “Voice recording capability, so users can be guided to their destination with the voices of their children, family or friends.”