Sometimes I feel as if my life is this book. Only... far longer.
-Pete.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Twitter? wtf?
Posted at Twitter.com
Peter · October 8 2008, 12:48 AM
This is what I DID:
Signed up to get connected with NetSolCares.
This is what I EXPECTED to happen:
- To achieve my purpose: Search for NetSolCares and get hooked in to their community.
- Learn what the heck this site is and does.
- Find answers about this place.
- Find out "what the big deal is."
- Use it intuitively and get explanations and help when it doesn't conform to expectations.
- Locate support Forums for more information.
- Get back to work soon.
This is what ACTUALLY happened:
I was confused. I got lost. I searched for far longer than I felt I needed to. I kept getting asked for my email address when I was just trying to find a SEARCH feature for other user accounts.
I FINALLY found NetSolCares after way too long, not by using the search feature, but just by truncating the URL and HAND TYPING IN "https://twitter.com/NetSolCares".
Then I got to the page and I asked myself, "What the hell?"
What was this Twitter thing for? Why was I told to come here? What was I supposed to do when I did get here? Where's the help?
I finally found an FAQ. It didn't answer my questions. Like...
- Why in the world would I use this social networking site over others?
- Why is Network Solutions telling people to use Twitter? What is the purpose of their Twitter account here?
- How can this synch with my cell phone or computer calendar so I don't need to dink with manual updates? I have to live my life, not "feed the beast" of the Internet.
- How could this interact with other social networking sites, Internet calendaring systems, or other applications so I don't need to keep coming here to tell people where I am?
- I've wasted far longer typing this in than I got utility value of using a "simple" application.
FINALLY: You left out the key question at the end of your "Request for Assistance," which is the REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE!!!!!!
Like, where on this form does it say, "What would you like for us to do for you?" Or "Do you have any suggestions to make Twitter better?" Or "How can we help or be of assistance?"
- Pretend like you never used this site, and look at it with fresh eyes. It really doesn't explain itself too well.
- Add in a "request" question so that you are not just listening to people tell you about problems, but let them ask for their redress of grievances or allow them to offer suggestions for improvements.
- Actually have some pragmatic purpose to the universe. This was a waste of my time -- so far -- unless there's something about this site that I utterly don't get.
- Please contact me -- BY PHONE (650-906-3134) -- to prove to me this is an actual business that cares about me, so I actually might care enough about using this service again.
I have some questions about utility value and pragmatics of this service. I blog about the good, bad, and the ugly of services.
Unless proven otherwise, I'd have to rate this experience so far as either of the latter two categories.
Hope you see that as fair?
This is what I DID:
Signed up to get connected with NetSolCares.
This is what I EXPECTED to happen:
- To achieve my purpose: Search for NetSolCares and get hooked in to their community.
- Learn what the heck this site is and does.
- Find answers about this place.
- Find out "what the big deal is."
- Use it intuitively and get explanations and help when it doesn't conform to expectations.
- Locate support Forums for more information.
- Get back to work soon.
This is what ACTUALLY happened:
I was confused. I got lost. I searched for far longer than I felt I needed to. I kept getting asked for my email address when I was just trying to find a SEARCH feature for other user accounts.
I FINALLY found NetSolCares after way too long, not by using the search feature, but just by truncating the URL and HAND TYPING IN "https://twitter.com/NetSolCares".
Then I got to the page and I asked myself, "What the hell?"
What was this Twitter thing for? Why was I told to come here? What was I supposed to do when I did get here? Where's the help?
I finally found an FAQ. It didn't answer my questions. Like...
- Why in the world would I use this social networking site over others?
- Why is Network Solutions telling people to use Twitter? What is the purpose of their Twitter account here?
- How can this synch with my cell phone or computer calendar so I don't need to dink with manual updates? I have to live my life, not "feed the beast" of the Internet.
- How could this interact with other social networking sites, Internet calendaring systems, or other applications so I don't need to keep coming here to tell people where I am?
- I've wasted far longer typing this in than I got utility value of using a "simple" application.
FINALLY: You left out the key question at the end of your "Request for Assistance," which is the REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE!!!!!!
Like, where on this form does it say, "What would you like for us to do for you?" Or "Do you have any suggestions to make Twitter better?" Or "How can we help or be of assistance?"
- Pretend like you never used this site, and look at it with fresh eyes. It really doesn't explain itself too well.
- Add in a "request" question so that you are not just listening to people tell you about problems, but let them ask for their redress of grievances or allow them to offer suggestions for improvements.
- Actually have some pragmatic purpose to the universe. This was a waste of my time -- so far -- unless there's something about this site that I utterly don't get.
- Please contact me -- BY PHONE (650-906-3134) -- to prove to me this is an actual business that cares about me, so I actually might care enough about using this service again.
I have some questions about utility value and pragmatics of this service. I blog about the good, bad, and the ugly of services.
Unless proven otherwise, I'd have to rate this experience so far as either of the latter two categories.
Hope you see that as fair?
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
iPhone Sort of Working
The other day, I took my iPhone back into AT&T and Apple. Back-to-back. I finally got the iPhone working. Sort of.
• GPS Nominal: The GPS shows Latitude & Longitude. There was a third party app to download & install. It doesn’t come native. Also, the GPS only works in AT&T tower range. It is not really GPS, and doesn’t pick up the GPS satellite signals at all. Caveat emptor. Don’t venture into real wilderness and hope to survive with your iPhone.
• Email Inbound: Rather than get email via .mac (MobileMe), I am now getting it from SpamArrest. However, I can't really control the outbound address I am sending from. I would prefer if the email outbound used petercorless@mac.com, rather than @spamarrest.com. I don’t want to dick with it, so I just don’t use it for email.
• Touch Screen still Touchy: The touch screen only interacts with fingertips and skin. No stylus. No pen or pencil point. Just a human touch. Which means it is as responsive as trying to steer a car wearing two basketballs for gloves. So I don’t use it to type with.
• Phone Coverage Sporadic: Sometimes I get a signal. Many times I don’t. At Wolf Camera, showing my iPhone to Scott, who works at the Apple Store at Stanford on alternate days, I showed him my phone. He called it from his own iPhone. Side-by-side. It went straight to voicemail. Not even a ring. “That shouldn’t do that,” he sagely opined. I quite agreed.
• No Built-in Help: The product had no built-in tutorial or help. It felt very 1984 all over again. “How do I use this?” “That is a very good question. Guards, arrest this man!” Finally I went to the Palo Alto Store, for the umpteenth time it seems. I got a Bluetooth headset which I will likely lose in the first week of ownership, and a clerk showed me how to stop some of the annoying “features” like shutting down within 60 seconds.
• No SD chip slot: What the...? Who thought lack of expandibility and portability of data was a good idea?
• Lack of a single-ear bud: They gave me this cute 2-ear bud, like I as going to use it as an MP3 player. I already got an iPod. 2 actually. But since I spend so much time dinking around trying to get my iPhone and my Mac and my Treo to work, I haven’t had time to actually get any more technological devices set up. Anyway, for a phone, I have no desire for 2 earbuds. Especially when I want to do hands-free driving. I want ONE ear bud, thank you. Apple doesn’t sell any. So they sold me a Bluetooth ear thingy. Which has no tether so I’ll likely drop it and lose it like the Bluetooth thingy I found outside Alberto’s in Mountain View the other week ago.
• Camera has really bad delay: I keep taking pictures about 3 seconds after I hit the button. Hence I tend to take a lot of blurry photos that do not even show what I had hoped to take pictures of. I have to stop..... and then wait.... and then wait more.... and then click .... and then I wait... and then I wait... and then it shows me the photo. Then it immediately shoves the picture away so I have to leave the camera-view to go to a gallery of a sort to delete bad shots. Then back again to the camera. Innacurate? Tedious? Blurry? Meh.
So the iPhone sort of works. I got a call on it today. Yay? I also had to make calls on it outbound when my old Treo 650 was dying (more on that in another article).
I’ll stick to the Treo, thank you. I upgraded to the 755P, after a torture-of-the-damned voyage into Microsoft Mobile hell and back with an 800W (more about that also in another article).
Simply put, the iPhone is far from the whiz-bang I had hoped it to be. Since I’ve wasted so much time dinking around just trying to get it to work AT ALL, I still haven’t gotten to use Evernote yet.
On a scale of Suckfulness, where 0 is “It doesn’t suck at all,” and 10 is “Please, first let me put my own eyes out, and then suffer to die, to punish myself for buying this turd of a product,” the iPhone is about a 4. It is painful to use, but not sufficiently painful enough to return to the manufacturer.
But in a Joy-to-use scale, it is also only a 4. I have not felt compelled to carry it around. I often just let it drain its batteries and sit on the shelf. “Oh well.” It is as impressive to me as my first Apple QuickTake camera. i.e., not-so-bad, not-so-good.
Maybe if I could start using Evernote I’d care more about it. That means I actually have to get all my technology products to work in harmony, and not act as boat anchors and paperweights.
Thinking about one thing more: the lack-of-touch-screen is going to be problematic in extreme cold weather. You have to take off any gloves, since you have to use a fingertip and you can’t use a stylus. Since you’ll be colder, your hand will shake more and be less effective in accurately touching a keyboard character. I keep thinking about New York City this Christmas, and am not looking forward to it.
-Pete.
• GPS Nominal: The GPS shows Latitude & Longitude. There was a third party app to download & install. It doesn’t come native. Also, the GPS only works in AT&T tower range. It is not really GPS, and doesn’t pick up the GPS satellite signals at all. Caveat emptor. Don’t venture into real wilderness and hope to survive with your iPhone.
• Email Inbound: Rather than get email via .mac (MobileMe), I am now getting it from SpamArrest. However, I can't really control the outbound address I am sending from. I would prefer if the email outbound used petercorless@mac.com, rather than @spamarrest.com. I don’t want to dick with it, so I just don’t use it for email.
• Touch Screen still Touchy: The touch screen only interacts with fingertips and skin. No stylus. No pen or pencil point. Just a human touch. Which means it is as responsive as trying to steer a car wearing two basketballs for gloves. So I don’t use it to type with.
• Phone Coverage Sporadic: Sometimes I get a signal. Many times I don’t. At Wolf Camera, showing my iPhone to Scott, who works at the Apple Store at Stanford on alternate days, I showed him my phone. He called it from his own iPhone. Side-by-side. It went straight to voicemail. Not even a ring. “That shouldn’t do that,” he sagely opined. I quite agreed.
• No Built-in Help: The product had no built-in tutorial or help. It felt very 1984 all over again. “How do I use this?” “That is a very good question. Guards, arrest this man!” Finally I went to the Palo Alto Store, for the umpteenth time it seems. I got a Bluetooth headset which I will likely lose in the first week of ownership, and a clerk showed me how to stop some of the annoying “features” like shutting down within 60 seconds.
• No SD chip slot: What the...? Who thought lack of expandibility and portability of data was a good idea?
• Lack of a single-ear bud: They gave me this cute 2-ear bud, like I as going to use it as an MP3 player. I already got an iPod. 2 actually. But since I spend so much time dinking around trying to get my iPhone and my Mac and my Treo to work, I haven’t had time to actually get any more technological devices set up. Anyway, for a phone, I have no desire for 2 earbuds. Especially when I want to do hands-free driving. I want ONE ear bud, thank you. Apple doesn’t sell any. So they sold me a Bluetooth ear thingy. Which has no tether so I’ll likely drop it and lose it like the Bluetooth thingy I found outside Alberto’s in Mountain View the other week ago.
• Camera has really bad delay: I keep taking pictures about 3 seconds after I hit the button. Hence I tend to take a lot of blurry photos that do not even show what I had hoped to take pictures of. I have to stop..... and then wait.... and then wait more.... and then click .... and then I wait... and then I wait... and then it shows me the photo. Then it immediately shoves the picture away so I have to leave the camera-view to go to a gallery of a sort to delete bad shots. Then back again to the camera. Innacurate? Tedious? Blurry? Meh.
So the iPhone sort of works. I got a call on it today. Yay? I also had to make calls on it outbound when my old Treo 650 was dying (more on that in another article).
I’ll stick to the Treo, thank you. I upgraded to the 755P, after a torture-of-the-damned voyage into Microsoft Mobile hell and back with an 800W (more about that also in another article).
Simply put, the iPhone is far from the whiz-bang I had hoped it to be. Since I’ve wasted so much time dinking around just trying to get it to work AT ALL, I still haven’t gotten to use Evernote yet.
On a scale of Suckfulness, where 0 is “It doesn’t suck at all,” and 10 is “Please, first let me put my own eyes out, and then suffer to die, to punish myself for buying this turd of a product,” the iPhone is about a 4. It is painful to use, but not sufficiently painful enough to return to the manufacturer.
But in a Joy-to-use scale, it is also only a 4. I have not felt compelled to carry it around. I often just let it drain its batteries and sit on the shelf. “Oh well.” It is as impressive to me as my first Apple QuickTake camera. i.e., not-so-bad, not-so-good.
Maybe if I could start using Evernote I’d care more about it. That means I actually have to get all my technology products to work in harmony, and not act as boat anchors and paperweights.
Thinking about one thing more: the lack-of-touch-screen is going to be problematic in extreme cold weather. You have to take off any gloves, since you have to use a fingertip and you can’t use a stylus. Since you’ll be colder, your hand will shake more and be less effective in accurately touching a keyboard character. I keep thinking about New York City this Christmas, and am not looking forward to it.
-Pete.
Sprint is killing me... 1 Oct 2008
Anna
Employee # 889376
• Called back Sprint @ 3:50 PM~
• Waited so long on hold I called down to Dawn Tuethorn to let her know I could not get down to St. Jude's today.
• I am late in going to San Francisco. At risk of not making engagement in SF tonight.
• Waited on hold until 4:00 pm
• Explained situation within 1 minute and was put back on hold.
CelleBrite Machine
• Sprint Store
• 5194 Stevens Creek Boulevard, San Jose
• Should not be a charge
• Format? How to get it into my Macintosh?
• Windows format for 800W.
• How do I get it to my Mac?
• Checking
• Not sure
"Quiet Riot Act" — explaining back story, again, and asking, again, to get this escalated and resolved.
• 4:20 PM - Are you telling all the Mac users to just abandon Sprint and go with AT&T
• 4:26 PM - Thank you for helping me. This is not "Your" problem, but it is a problem
• 4:35 PM - Still doesn't work with Mac
• 4:42 PM - No total Quality Management; conformance to customer expectations
• 4:47 PM - Account services please
• 4:50 PM - still waiting on hold for Account Services. Got Anna's Employee #.
Rosalee
• 4:53 PM Start the story again
• 4:57 PM - Can I have a Centro? I'll go pick it up tonight at a store. It's only $79.99. Do I need to buy it? This other phone, 800W doesn't synch and the 650 is dying. I just need a phone please. We can fix the lack of Mac-800W synch later. Please.
• 5:01 PM - Get phone for thirty (30) days, then return.
• 5:01-5:06 PM - Can you guarantee me the phone will be usable as desired in 30 days? Mac-to-800W Synch? Can you just say yes to a Centro? Can we turn this around and get this working so people don’t just abandon Sprint and go to AT&T? Do you really just want people to buy iPhones and go to AT&T?
• 5:06 PM - Supervisor, please.
• 5:08 PM - On hold. Waiting for supervisor.
• 5:12 PM - Called Yelena. Missed appointment in San Francisco. Still on hold. Getting transferred to Supervisor. "Customer" = One who gets one own way.
Jay
• 5:13 PM -
• 5:17 PM -
• 5:20 PM -
• 5:24 PM - Escalation of issues.
• 5:26 PM - Forward to direct manager; forward to client services manager. Then out of his hands.
• 5:27 PM - Is there a ticket #? How do I track it to resolution? Send an email.
• 5:30 PM - Loaner capability Centro. But not really. No dice.
Marketing
• Will you make a deal?
• "I will escalate to my manager, then client services manager."
• Call me back in 8 Days. We got a deal.
• You're killing me.
• 5:38 PM - Thank you for calling Sprint. Have a good day. Bye.
Employee # 889376
• Called back Sprint @ 3:50 PM~
• Waited so long on hold I called down to Dawn Tuethorn to let her know I could not get down to St. Jude's today.
• I am late in going to San Francisco. At risk of not making engagement in SF tonight.
• Waited on hold until 4:00 pm
• Explained situation within 1 minute and was put back on hold.
CelleBrite Machine
• Sprint Store
• 5194 Stevens Creek Boulevard, San Jose
• Should not be a charge
• Format? How to get it into my Macintosh?
• Windows format for 800W.
• How do I get it to my Mac?
• Checking
• Not sure
"Quiet Riot Act" — explaining back story, again, and asking, again, to get this escalated and resolved.
• 4:20 PM - Are you telling all the Mac users to just abandon Sprint and go with AT&T
• 4:26 PM - Thank you for helping me. This is not "Your" problem, but it is a problem
• 4:35 PM - Still doesn't work with Mac
• 4:42 PM - No total Quality Management; conformance to customer expectations
• 4:47 PM - Account services please
• 4:50 PM - still waiting on hold for Account Services. Got Anna's Employee #.
Rosalee
• 4:53 PM Start the story again
• 4:57 PM - Can I have a Centro? I'll go pick it up tonight at a store. It's only $79.99. Do I need to buy it? This other phone, 800W doesn't synch and the 650 is dying. I just need a phone please. We can fix the lack of Mac-800W synch later. Please.
• 5:01 PM - Get phone for thirty (30) days, then return.
• 5:01-5:06 PM - Can you guarantee me the phone will be usable as desired in 30 days? Mac-to-800W Synch? Can you just say yes to a Centro? Can we turn this around and get this working so people don’t just abandon Sprint and go to AT&T? Do you really just want people to buy iPhones and go to AT&T?
• 5:06 PM - Supervisor, please.
• 5:08 PM - On hold. Waiting for supervisor.
• 5:12 PM - Called Yelena. Missed appointment in San Francisco. Still on hold. Getting transferred to Supervisor. "Customer" = One who gets one own way.
Jay
• 5:13 PM -
• 5:17 PM -
• 5:20 PM -
• 5:24 PM - Escalation of issues.
• 5:26 PM - Forward to direct manager; forward to client services manager. Then out of his hands.
• 5:27 PM - Is there a ticket #? How do I track it to resolution? Send an email.
• 5:30 PM - Loaner capability Centro. But not really. No dice.
Marketing
• Will you make a deal?
• "I will escalate to my manager, then client services manager."
• Call me back in 8 Days. We got a deal.
• You're killing me.
• 5:38 PM - Thank you for calling Sprint. Have a good day. Bye.
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