Here is a photo from a parking lot. As you see, one parking spot has been mutilated – apparently, as an afterthought – by sticking two poles in it. The intent, clearly, is to keep a clear path to the stairs leading to the sidewalk above. A valid idea, but ill-executed in so many ways… … Read more
I called someone in the US and he wasn’t at his desk; the system helpfully informed me that the guy was not available but that I could …please leave a message – or, during business hours, press zero for assistance. It was during business hours. I pressed zero. The system cheerfully told me: Please hold! … Read more
My account on a social networking group froze me out, so I wrote their support an email explaining that I can’t log in, with details of how this came about. I got a wonderful reply indeed: Please follow the following steps: 1. Log in to your account … Wonderful! I replied “You’re joking, right?” and … Read more
A couple of weeks ago we saw a poorly designed twin mains socket. Whoever designed that one wasn’t very bright, but he was a genius compared to the person who mounted the socket strip we see here: I found this setup in an office building. Ignore the shoddy execution of the cable conduit below, but … Read more
Here are two mains power sockets from around our home. One is a standard grounded 220V socket. The second is obviously much better: in the same space, for the same trouble, it takes two plugs! In the USA this is of course standard practice; all wall socket panels have two sockets. Here, though, this is … Read more
Last year I reported on the inefficient design of a teleconference system, as far as respect for the user’s time is concerned. Today I sat through a really lovely case of this design issue. This system, speaking with a booming, ebullient voice, took me through the following: System: Welcome to the conference center! System: Please … Read more
I already praised my Nokia E71 smartphone, that marvel of miniaturized power. Well, today I tried to update Nokia PC Suite, the software that runs on my notebook to allow it to sync with the smartphone. And as I was clicking through the installation process, something caught my eye in the dialog below: It was … Read more
Used to be, at the beginning of every (face to face) meeting ten minutes would be wasted on getting the slide projector going. Today many meetings are virtual, but the same time is still wasted while people try to log into the shared meeting workspace… A case in point: I’ve just participated in a meeting … Read more
Here then is my sleek Nokia E71, and I really like it overall. But nobody’s perfect, right?… Take the calendar application that came on this handheld. It has a number of shortcomings (more on these later) and one amusing quirk: most of the time when you click the calendar button it displays an empty screen … Read more
Business cards have been around for a long time – very long, if you count visiting cards – so we should not be surprised if they tend to have an innate inertia to them. Still, business has changed so much in recent years – isn’t it time that the cards paid attention? I was scanning … Read more
