reDesign

Web 2.0 has brought a lot of innovation in how we connect with people. Sites like flickr, Wikipedia, Facebook and YouTube have unleashed the creativity of hundreds of millions of people across the planet. People have struggled to come up with new ad models to monetize all that traffic.

Web2.0Expo brought an ad model I hadn’t seen before: wheelchair advertising. The jive ad you see below is on a 6-foot wooden sign attached to a wheelchair.

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.

As I was checking out of the spa at Princeville a few weeks ago, the receptionist said “You Welcome,” exactly the same way my friend Wanita does. It got me thinking about the distinctive ways we express ourselves.

There is another distinct Wanitaism: she expresses mild dissatisfaction with “grumble.” Not actually grumbling, but saying the word grumble. (She expresses strong dissatisfaction more directly.)

Many of these things we do without realizing it. Tricia expresses sympathy with a drawn out “saaaaaaad”. Wanita and I pointed it out one day and she had no idea she’d done it hundreds of times.

Doris expresses confusion with “the hell?,” omitting the “what.”

Jon keeps his own list of Darrenisms, weird sayings by our friend Darren. My favorite is “astrocity” to refer to a satellite dish on a neighbor’s house.

In a post like this, it’s only fair that I share my own. (As shared by my friends, because I don’t necessarily notice.)

• My “no”s and “yes”es are sometimes unclear, coming out as “nyep.” My poker buddies hated this.
• It can be hard to read my facial expressions as the expressions for indifferent, sad and angry are the same.
• Apparently I have a communications superpower that some of my friends are jealous of. Revealing it would dilute that power, so I won’t.

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 was out at AT&T Park yesterday for an exhibition game against the Oakland A’s and was reminded why this is one of my favorite parks in baseball. Although I’ve been to the park many times before, in its various incarnations of the Ma Bell reassembly, this was the first time I took in all the features.

(RSS readers, click to the blog to see the embedded slideshow or view it on flickr.)

Among the things I love about the park:

• The stadium itself. There are great sightlines from most seats in the park. (I wouldn’t recommend the top of the lower deck, though.) You can walk all the way around. If you don’t like your seat, there are plenty of places around the park to stand and watch the game. AT&T Park offers a blend of old and new. In addition to the high definition JumboTron in center field, there’s a manually operated scoreboard in right field.
• The setting. Of the parks I’ve been to, AT&T Park has the most picturesque setting. You get sweeping views of San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge.
• The food. Purists may object, but you can get a wide range of food, including burgers, dogs, seafood, pizza, barbecue and Mexican. Among the more unusual items for a baseball stadium: Ghiradelli hot chocolate delivered to your seat. (Which can be important, see below.) You can get a hot dog for under $5 and a bad domestic beer for under $6.
• The other activities. Again, purists may object, but there’s plenty to do at the park even if you aren’t a baseball fan. You can take a plunge down the 80-foot Coca-Cola slide, walk the promenade or just take in the great views. If you’re truly bored, use the parks WiFi or Internet kiosks. (But I’ll be rooting for your laptop screen to be shattered by a foul ball.)
• The fan-friendly policies. You can bring in food and non-alcoholic drinks. You can also transfer your tickets electronically to someone else through the Giants’ Web site. Before Major League Baseball imposed StubHub on all its teams, you could also buy tickets from season ticketholders.
• The fact that it was privately funded. The stadium is a true rarity among sports facilities these days: the public didn’t pay for it. Unlike the hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars that some parks get, taxpayer subsidies for Pac Bell were limited to improvements around the site for access.

With all that it has going for it, AT&T Park does have its challenges:

• The team. Sure, it sold out quite frequently last year, but those stats were juiced with the Bonds draw. Don’t look for a winning team anytime soon.
• The cold. San Francisco is a bit on the chilly side year around and the park’s location right on the water means you’ll probably be cold at some point. Bring your best football clothing and blankets.
• The neighborhood. It’s not a bad neighborhood, but it’s a new one and still somewhat plastic. You won’t find the street vendors and party atmosphere that you see at Wrigley, Fenway or even Camden Yards.

Tellmes know how to throw a great party. The annual St. Patrick’s Day party was a jolly good time. Colleagues from Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus joined us in the courtyard for limerick and mashed potato sculpting contests. The winning sculpture? A bust of Steve Ballmer:

Ironically, on the train ride home I heard a Marketplace report about concerns that a Microsoft acquisition would destroy Yahoo’s culture. Who knows what would happen, but the report did contain at least one factual error: Microsoft employees do get free coffee. Tellme employees also get free cookies.

(RSS readers should click through to the post to see the slideshow.)

I’ve written before about problems with the UI on ATMs, such as repeatedly asking what language you want and having you enter cents for withdrawals when no ATM I know of dispenses pennies.

I ran across another problem the other day: an ATM that doesn’t know when to count. I asked for $200. The machine connected to the network, subtracted $201.85 from my account and then started spitting out money. Whirr. Click. Uh oh.

Seeing as I wasn’t in Vegas and there is no such thing as a $200 bill, I began to worry. There was an ominous message that said simply “Cash dispensing error”. The machine only had $20 in it.

The machine should keep track of how much it has in it so that as soon as you enter $200, it checks and says, “Sorry, I’ve only got $20. Do you want that?” This should happen before taking the money out of your bank account.

Here’s a case where bad UI made the ATM company money: I ended up paying $1.85 to withdraw $20, a whopping 9.25%. If I’d known that there was only $20 in the thing, I would have used a different ATM. Now if only I’d reprogrammed that ATM to think I took out $5.

Yes, yes, I know. I’m behind. The new job, a coast-to-coast commute, moving and trying to maximize time with my DC friends have taken their toll on my reading and blog writing time.

• Photo Clues Lead to Camera’s Owner (AP) - A New York City woman finds a camera in a cab and returns it. Shocking, I know. She, her fiance and family did a bit of detective work, analyzing the pictures on the camera to find its rightful owner in Australia. I keep meaning to put a locked image on my cameras with my contact information, just in case it falls into the hands of someone like that New Yorker. I could stand losing a $300 camera, but the images from a trip are a much bigger loss.
  Another use for digital cameras: using it to find people you’ve lost. I lost my friend Pam in an Italian museum. I didn’t know the language and the docent didn’t speak English. Flipped my camera to a picture of Pam, handed it to the docent and she pointed the way.
• Police: Woman Thinks She’s Being Fired, Sabotages Boss (News4Jax.com) - She gets the wrong idea after reading a classified ad that had her boss’ phone number in it and destroys seven years worth of architectural drawings. Wow. People still look at classifieds? Lesson for employers: back up data. Lesson for disgruntled employees: use multi-pass deletion. via Wanita Niehaus
• Dip Once or Dip Twice? (New York Times) - Just in time for the Super Bowl, a report concludes that double dipping is bad. I do have to question the methodology: “The team of nine students instructed volunteers to take a bite of a wheat cracker and dip the cracker for three seconds into about a tablespoon of a test dip.” Three seconds is an awfully loooooong time. But then this is the same group that debunked the five-second rule. (It depends on what you dropped and the surface it was dropped onto.) via Sree Sreenivasan
• Drunk driver dials 911 (CNN, video) - Drunk dialing and drunk texting are bad. Drunk dialing 911 while you’re driving is really bad. The cops don’t want to escort you home. Meanwhile, a Minnesota legislator is trying to ban ladies’ nights with free drinks for women.
• ExtraGeek Luis von Ahn: Human Computation (Wired Science) - This week, I’m introducing a new feature that will highlight stories that are extra geeky. Carnegie Mellon computer scientist von Ahn discusses CAPTCHAs — those annoying things you have to decipher and type to sign up for accounts, buy tickets at Ticketmaster and other assorted tasks. von Ahn is trying to harness distributed human intelligence to help computers learn. The reCAPTCHA project tries to use CAPTCHAs to digitize books. Google licensed von Ahn’s ideas for its Image Labeler.

You turn the key and the engine goes vroom. That’s how you start a car. In the more than 10 years since I started driving, there have been a lot of change in cars. I’ve seen the addition of safety features like airbags and antilock brakes. Once luxury items like air conditioning and keyless entry have become standard on all but the lowest-end models. Navigation systems and speech recognition have become available. But starting the car has been the same.

That’s why I was thrown for a loop this week when Avis gave me a Nissan Altima Hybrid. There were three parts that made the usability of the Altima tricky

• The key itself looks like the fobs that most cars have.
• The start/stop button that takes the place of the keyhole.
• The electric motor.

You don’t put the key in and turn. In fact, you don’t have to put the key in it at all. As long as the key is in the car, you can start the car by putting your foot on the brake and hitting the start button. (I figured this out thanks to a cryptic informational display that appeared when I was simply pressing the start button.)

The fact that you don’t have to have the key in the ignition also makes stopping and parking tricky. I parked, walked out of the car, locked the doors and went into the office. When I returned at the end of the day, the car was still running. Because the car is silent when in electric mode, I didn’t realize the car was still on when I parked. (Hybrid cars also present a problem for blind pedestrians at intersections, because they can’t hear them coming.) I still don’t know whether someone could’ve driven off with the car during the day.

Keeping track of the key is also fun. Unlike other cars with the fancy keys, the Altima seems to require that you press a button to unlock the door. You can’t just keep the key in your pocket, grab the handle and have it open automatically like on the Prius. I could never remember if I put the key in my jacket pocket, jeans or in the console. There is a place to put the key in the dash, but it’s not where the ignition slot usually is.

The valets at my hotel also seemed to have a hard time with the car. We couldn’t figure out why the trunk release wouldn’t work. It turns out that the car was still on (though silent) and there is an interlock that prevents the trunk from opening when the car is on. The interlock should really be tied to whether the car is in park.

It’s probably not fair to judge these features based on my experience as a casual user for a week. If I owned the car, I’d certainly get used to these quirks and would likely come to appreciate them.

But with such a radical departure from a long held user experience, there need to be design elements to ease the transition. I certainly don’t want a repeat of “the door is ajar” from the K-Car of the 80s, but some sort of reminder that this dummy left the car on would be nice. Or an ignition cutoff if the key is removed from the car for more than 15 minutes.

If the city you’re going to begins with P-Z, move the giant stocking out of the way.