David Emery OnlineI'm right. You're wrong.
Me: “Excuse me – I ordered Cappuccinos, not Lattes.”
Them: “No no – I’m sure they were Lattes.”
Me: “Errm, I’m really quite sure I ordered Cappuccinos.”
Them: “No, it was definitely Lattes.”
Where does this attitude come from?
I have coffee every day, and I always order the same thing. I know I ordered the right thing, but yet the server insisted that he was right, then begrudgingly made me a new one.
What I wonder is what his motivation was for arguing with me?
Did he think that by arguing, I was suddenly going to change my mind and decide I wanted a different drink?
Of course, you see this kind of mentality all the time; “No, you don’t want that.”; “Are you sure you want to quit?” etc. Software design – both offline an online – is ripe with this kind of stubbornness.
Arguing with the user is never a good thing.
~~~
On a completely different note, today I’ve been attending @media 2007, and very good it’s been too. Lots of interesting and thought provoking talks so far – I particularly liked Jason Santa Maria’s talk this morning.
It’s been a completely different experience to Future of Web Apps – for a start, it’s a lot...
Read more ➔RSS Addict
Ok, I have a question for you:
Is 670 a big number?
Obviously this question means very little without context, so I’ll rephrase it slightly:
Is 670 feeds a big number?
At the pre-@media drinks this evening we’re were talking merrily away when someone asked what our favorite blogs were. Going round the table, the obvious ones cropped up – Signal Vs Noise a firm favorite by all – and someone mentioned that they only read 5 feeds.
Now this was widely accepted to be a little low, but when it became known that I read 670 feeds on a daily basis people seemed to be properly surprised. Now, I know that a read a lot (it’s one of the reasons I started doing Friday Links) but I really didn’t think that my feed reader usage was that abnormal.
Ah well.
I guess it is then.
When pressed I couldn’t choose a favorite blog, and to be honest I still can’t right now. As someone pointed out, there’s no way I can “read” that many feeds every day, only skim for the more interesting stuff to pick out and look at in more depth, which I guess really doesn’t help in trying to decide which “one” is...
Read more ➔Genius Bar
As mentioned yesterday, today I took my ever-ailing MacBook to the genius bar at my local Apple Store. Now, I don’t want to jinx things – quite possible, in this instance I think – but it seems I may have come across the weirdest problem I’ve ever heard of.
To set the scene, in January my MacBook died; the HD started making a “clicking” sound on boot, and couldn’t be seen by the OS installer. So, I popped in a replacement HD and tried to do a fresh install from the CDs that came with it, but it never managed to install successfully – it would error out every time.
So, off it went to Apple – for 4 weeks – and it came back with a new HD, new logic board and a new top case. When I came to doing a fresh install it error-ed a couple of times, but worked on the third time so I thought nothing of it. Now, I’ve had a number of random kernal panics in the months since, and the HD died again in similar circumstances, although I didn’t think too much of it as it was a larger disk from another MacBook owner...
Read more ➔Boo and Yay
A longer post today is forgone again by the continuing saga that is my Apple MacBook. For the second time it has completely died, hence accounting for much wasted time at customer help desks, genius bars and the like.
For those counting at home, I’ve so far had these problems with my MacBook (in the order they happened):
- Unreliable trackpad button
- Unreliable down arrow key
- Dead battery
- Top-case discolouration
- Motherboard failure
- HD failure
- HD failure
- Motherboard failure
I have an appointment with Apple tomorrow; I’m after a new one, to be honest, but if not I might just buy a MacBook Pro and sell it when it returns repaired…
Anyway, I’ve been cheered up massively by going to see St. Vincent at the Luminaire. Not many people can managed to pull off performing completely solo, without a backing band, but she certainly can – she has brilliant stage presence, not to mention brilliant guitar skills.
Friday Links XVI
The Outside Brain – “There is no option in Pandora for saying thanks”. I’m still not convinced that subscription is the future model of music – I think the sense of ownership over music is far too high. I’m getting the feeling, though, that everyone else around me thinks differently in this regard.
Clunker Hype: Palm Intros Foleo Device – Umm, Palm are really screwed, aren’t they? This is a truly woeful device – why would you buy it, as opposed to a proper laptop?
iTunes Selling EMI DRM Free But Attaching Purchaser’s Info – why is this a problem? Assuming that you abide the law then only you will be able to see your files anyway. Does anybody have a problem with software serial numbers being tied to your email address? Also – as I have read this in a couple of places – putting the owners information embedded in the downloaded file is not DRM.
Parallels Desktop 3 – oooh, this looks good. Parallels has very rapidly become must-have software.
Jack White Makes Chicago DJ Feel Icky About Herself – it amazes me how naive some people are about the way the music industry is...
Read more ➔TheirTube
Two interesting online video related tidbits:
YouTube on Apple TV to use H.264
Real Makes Its Video Move: Next Real Player will download Flash Video
Firstly, continuing on with the rather prolonged Apple discussion yesterday the news that the delay for the YouTube feature on the AppleTV is due to the fact that they are re-encoding the entire YouTube catalogue to use h264 (which is the de-facto Apple/Quicktime codec). This move has all sorts of knock-on effects and questions.
- YouTube must store the original versions of all videos uploaded.
- The AppleTV is going to be – for the time being at least – the only place you’ll be able to view higher quality YouTube videos. If they aren’t higher quality, why would they be re-encoding?
- If the AppleTV can access higher quality h264 versions of YouTube videos, someone will be able to figure out how to download them from a PC.
- Is this the first step towards either a higher quality (paid for?) YouTube service, or maybe video downloads?
I think number 3 is the most important point; there’s going to be a large amount of people out there that have uploaded their videos on to YouTube – as opposed to some other form of...
Read more ➔Busy Day
Some days I find it really hard to write, as nothing has really happened. Admittedly, I have a suspicion that these probably turn out to by my better posts, as I actually have to do a bit of thinking, but never mind…
Today is not one of those days, anyway.
So, lets start – as always – with Apple; today they finally released iTunes 7.2, and along with it iTunes Plus which is Apple’s fancy-pants marketing name for DRM free tracks on iTunes. So, for those playing along at home, mark the date – 30th May 2007 is officially the day DRM died.
Good riddance and all that.
The details of the implementation aren’t all that interesting: basically, you now get to choose whether you want to see iTunes Plus tracks or normal tracks, and there’s also an option to “Upgrade” your already purchased tracks. I had a whopping 5 tracks, which cost me an equally whopping £0.90 to upgrade. That’s really about it – nothing too radical here.
I’m still particularly impressed – purely on a marketing front – with the simultaneous move to 256kbps tracks as well as no DRM. Whoever thought of that idea should get a nice meaty bonus come...
Read more ➔Photography
I don’t, as a general rule, believe in things like karma or fate.
It’s all made up rubbish designed for simple minds*.
However, after writing this a few months ago I’m willing to concede that I rather set myself up for a fall. If you haven’t guessed – or were too lazy to follow that link – I had a sick day today, having been caught out by a nasty cold that crept up on me over the holiday weekend. Hence, no major thinking today.
It does however, mean I’ve managed to do a little tinkering with my blog – if you look down at the bottom of the home page you’ll see I’m bringing in my last 10 photos from my Flickr stream. This was achieved really incredibly easily using the vdh_flickr plugin for Textpattern, which does exactly what I wanted (and a lot more besides). It all took about 15 minutes to set up, including CSS-ing etc, which is nice!
Of course, finally adding photos as a feature to this site is indicative of two things: firstly, and most obviously, I’m taking a hell of a lot more photos then I ever have before, and this is completely down...
Read more ➔Friday Links XV
Facebook F8 Live – I’m very impressed with what Facebook have done here – opening up their platform for everyone to develop on. I have no doubt that in 6-12 months time Facebook will be completely dominant in the social network space, and quite probably the most visited site in – at least – the US.
‘Cause we are living in an a-synchronous world, and I am an a-synchronous girl… – more good points about Facebook and social networks from Tara.
MySpace talking ‘white label’ deals? – seriously; who would choose to use the MySpace platform? The only thing they’ve got going is their userbase and brand.
We7: free music downloads + ads – I don’t think advertising-in-audio is a model that is going to work; it’s far too intrusive.
Infighting dogs Tarantino’s latest release – hmmm, they better release the full, original cut somewhere in the UK. ICA, Barbican et al I’m looking in your direction…
d.Construct 2007 – I don’t know if I’m going to go yet, but the site is brilliant. Don’t forget to change the stages of the site at the top of the page, and try resizing your browser window. Lovely!
Passively Multiplayer Online...
Read more ➔Watch things
I think I wore myself out for the week yesterday, on the writing front at least, so today I’m going to highlight some nice bits of video that are floating around these here internets recently.
First up is this rather wonderful advert for Skoda:
Firstly, the concept is just brilliant – simply the idea that instead of faking it, that they just did it for real. Secondly, it’s just so much fun and seems to really reinforce the brand judging from the people I’ve spoken to.
Next, the new White Stripes video for the forthcoming single, Icky Thump:
Such a good song, and a great video to go with it.
Next up, the brand new video for Emma Pollock:
The song is great, and I quite like the almost retro feel that the video has going on.
Finally, a live video from The National on MTV:
After going on about how good they were on Tuesday, I thought I’d share this with you –...
Read more ➔