Check out the great pictures on flickr from opening night at the Nats’ new stadium. This crowdsourced collection is much more captivating than the skeletal slideshow at washingtonpost.com. For best effect, install the PicLens Firefox extension.
See also: Flickr vs. The Washington Post
The Honolulu Advertiser has done an absolutely terrific job with its saturation coverage of the abrupt shutdown of Aloha Airlines. The coverage is exactly what local papers should be doing on big local stories.
In addition to in-depth news stories, the coverage includes extensive photo galleries and videos. Relevant historical stories are highlighted. There are active reader forums as well as tips for travelers and a job search board with ideas for laid off employees.
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:
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.
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:
With all that it has going for it, AT&T Park does have its challenges:
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.
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.)
Some interesting reads from the past couple of weeks:
I stopped growing early. After what I can only assume was a massive early growth spurt, I capped out at my current 5’3″. The picture above was taken before I entered middle school; using mom as a benchmark, I must be near full height.
Being short presents a lot of challenges. I struggle to see at concerts and sporting events. It can be hard to find friends in a crowd. Clothes shopping is a frustrating ordeal. Getting a drink in a crowded bar can take a while (except for the drinks that oafs spill on me).
Being short can affect two other important parts of life: career and relationships.
Numerous studies have shown that shorter men are less likely to become CEOs and make less money than their taller counterparts. Short men who do make it into leadership positions are often viewed as dictatorial and petty, with an ax to grind with with the world.
While it’s hard to say what would have happened in my career if I were taller, it’s safe to say I’ve reached an above-average level of success for someone my age. It hasn’t been by stomping on people; I don’t think the people who have worked for me would say I’m dictatorial or petty.
Relationships are another matter. Being short presents a significant barrier in dating, which isn’t helped by “research” that says short men are more prone to jealousy. A quote from the comments to the story is telling:
I’m a woman and whenever I tell any of my girlfriends I’ve a guy in mind for them, the first question, even before his values, personality, looks, income, job, family, culture etc is always, “How tall is he?” If the answer is not over 5’10 I might as well not bother.
It’s an attitude I’ve encountered over and over. I’ve heard women repeatedly complain about not being able to find smart, successful, caring, honest men while at the same time thumbing their noses at men because of their height.
Looking at it from a market perspective, I know that I have to offset my perceived deficiencies in other ways. Being a jackass won’t help my case. Would I be as nice, as generous or as caring if I were taller? The honest answer: I don’t know.
Unfortunately, the dating market is one with severe information distortion. It’s easy for a jerk to be nice, a miser to be generous, a chauvinist to be chivalrous, a married man to pretend to be single. These things are easily faked, at least for a short time. Short men can’t fake being tall.
It’s tempting to say that women who won’t date someone who is below average in height are shallow, uneducated or ignorant. Tempting, but wrong. These attitudes persist among the most educated and independent women I know.
I’ve heard from some women that they have no inherent objection to dating short men, they just won’t because they don’t want to deal with “short man syndrome.” That’s a huge cop out.
It’s not uncommon for me — even among my close friends — to hear short jokes, the kind that would be clearly off limits if made about race, gender or sexuality.
Hollywood, which is full of short men, potentially could influence this situation. I had a glimmer of hope a couple of weeks ago while watching the pilot of Unhitched. In the show, Kate (played by Rashida Jones) is considering whether to date a shorter guy. All her friends encourage her to have an open mind.
She shows up on the date with a nicely dressed guy who escorts her to front row seats at a Celtics games. He chats it up with the players, who all seem to know him. How’d he get those great seats? He’s the leprechaun for the Celtics. Ugh.
I debated whether to post this entry because I don’t want to be labeled as having “short man syndrome.” If an articulate post about something that affects me deeply means I have a complex, so be it.
Am I short? Yup. Am I angry about it? Only when I read unfair, insulting and sterotypical comments like these.
Some interesting items from the last few weeks:
Rakesh Agrawal's blog 