Archive for March, 2006
Corporate unspeak
Alliance and Leicester has revamped its online banking system, which of course means all kinds of problems. However, when you call the helpdesk you get a superb message:
Due to the success of our new website, we are currently experiencing high call volumes.
Yes: all those incoming calls to the tech support line are compliments!
Copy protection is killing your battery
There’s an interesting post on Engadget: copy protection isn’t just annoying, it seems. It’s bad for battery life too.
According to tests conducted by CNET, strong DRM “not only slows down an MP3 player but also sucks the very life out of them.” CNET found that the extra processing power required to check licenses and decode protected tracks could cut battery life by as much as 25%.
… And iPod users aren’t off the hook either: when playing tracks protected by Apple’s FairPlay DRM, CNET found that iPod battery life declined by 8%.
Spotlight now searches Entourage email
…which makes me very happy. If you’re running Office Mac 2004, there’s a new update that adds Spotlight searching to your email messages and other Entourage items. Click on Help > Check for updates in any Office 2004 application to get it.
More puppy madness
I’m taking far too many pictures of Megan, so rather than fill my entire blog with puppy action I’ve started uploading the pics to Flickr instead.
Microsoft tweaks Office again
Microsoft has unveiled the tweaked Office 2007 interface, which looks much more coherent than Beta 1 - and utterly different to previous Offices.
Incredible 3D pavement art
Wow. Amazing 3D pavement art [via Fark.com]
It’s not faulty, it’s just duff design
Half of the “malfunctioning” products returned to manufacturers aren’t defective - they’re just duff designs, reckons Reuters. Netherlands researcher Elke den Oulden found that some firms’ products are so badly designed, even the firms’ own staff can’t work them.
A wave of versatile electronics gadgets has flooded the market in recent years, ranging from MP3 players and home cinema sets to media centers and wireless audio systems, but consumers still find it hard to install and use them, she found.
The average consumer in the United States will struggle for 20 minutes to get a device working, before giving up, the study found.
Product developers, brought in to witness the struggles of average consumers, were astounded by the havoc they created.
She also gave new products to a group of managers from consumer electronics company Philips, asking them to use them over the weekend. The managers returned frustrated because they could not get the devices to work properly.
[Via Fark]
The reborn Ask.com: good, not great
Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves) is spending a fortune on newspaper ads at the moment, because it wants you to use it instead of Google. It’s nicer than before and when the “binoculars” (a mouseover that displays a site preview) work, the whole experience is very clever. The search results seem pretty good, too.
I’m sticking with Google, though: Ask.com gives up far too much of the results page to adverts, so while the paid links on Google take up about 1/8th of the screen, Ask.com’s text ads take up roughly twice that amount. If Ask also decides to put up product search results, the amount of usable space falls further (try searching for “mac” and you’ll see what I mean).
A few extra lines of ads probably doesn’t sound like a big deal, but when you use search engines throughout your working day that’s an awful lot of extra scrolling and clicking.
“Something for the weekend, sir?”
The Observer’s running a superb advert at the moment, for The Original Blue Pill. It’s not the product that’s amused me - it seems to be yet another pretend Viagra - but the ad, because it’s a work of advertising genius.
The advert takes up a quarter page of the newspaper, but it doesn’t make a single claim about the product. It doesn’t even tell you what the product is. Instead, it warns of rip-offs from firms that claim to sell the Original Blue Pill but who simply sell pale imitations, it suggests to its customers that if they find the 100mg pill too strong, they should use half a tablet, and it prints testimonials of the “Mr A.B.” variety about how The Original Blue Pill changed customers’ lives, answered their prayers, and so on.
There’s something strangely hypnotic about an advert that refuses to say anything about the product it’s advertising. I’m not the only person who thinks so: over on Flickr, Stephen Newton’s amused too. It’s a fantastic bit of nudge-nudge selling, and while I usually hate the purveyors of magic potions I have to admire this lot’s sheer savvy.
Let’s make some Noise
Noise is either really clever or really stupid: it generates “pink noise”. The site says:
Also known as a signal with even power distribution on a logarithmic frequency scale, pink noise masks background noise to help you concentrate. Now with source code and white noise, for those less colorful. Drown out annoying roommates and co-workers today!
I’ve downloaded it and I can confidently say that yes, it does indeed produce noise.
[Free, Mac only.]