Alsop's Small Thoughts

What's up with Wired Magazine Online?

I read an article in Wired magazine and wanted to send the URL to a friend. So I type in www.wired.com and am routed to Wired News, which I didn't want. What I wanted was the article "My Bionic Quest for Bolero", about the author's efforts to reprogram his cochlear implant to hear music, specifically Bolero. It was published in the November issue of Wired. So I typed "cochlear" in the search box, which claims proudly that it is powered by Lycos, and asked it to search Wired magazine. I got 41 search results, not one of which was the relevant article. Indeed, the last article it showed was from 2003, as though it hadn't even indiexed the last few years. Then I typed in "Bolero" since it is in the headline and it said there were no results at all. Then I typed in "Reprogramming the Inner Ear" and also got no results. So I clicked on the link to the current, December issue of the magazine, shown on the left side (don't click on the mini-cover or you'll be sent to a subscription page!). Then I get to browse the November issue by clicking on its link. And the Bolero article is the third article listed in the issue.

But, when I try to email the article, the emailer app tells me I haven't included the URL even though it is displayed and in a very Web 1.0 fashion refreshes the whole page so I lose the text I've typed in my email. So I end up copying the URL from the article into my email program and writing the email there.

The search is broken. The emailer app is broken. The site is designed to sell subscriptions rather than work with the magazine's editorial. And this from the magazine that asks in its current issue: "Who's afraid of Google?"

Electricity & Computing

I found a book I read a while ago that I think is one of the best reads I've had in some time: "Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse And the Race to Electrify the World" by Jill Jonnes. What's most fun about it is that it sounds just like the beginning of the personal computer industry or the internet business or a number of other major bubble-driven businesses. And it all happened more than 100 years ago. Reminds you that we're not so unique, after all.

Great Error Messages: Windows Media 10

I upgraded to Windows Media 10 last night, at the suggestion of Windows. I don't even want to tell you how ugly it was replacing so much software on my computer and then restarting it. But best -- particularly for older folks like myself, who remember what Napster really stood for when it was started -- was the message I got when I tried to play a track that WM10 found after it surveyed my hard disk:

"The track you are trying to play is a Napster track. Click here to install Napster. After you install Napster, close this window before playing tracks."

Napster with DRM!

OGM Etiquette

I really dislike listening to the outgoing message (OGM) on the voice mail for people whom I call frequently. I've already heard the message repeatedly and want to leave a message fast. I don't want to have to listen to the options ("press 5 now to page this person", which I never do) and only eventually actually get to leave my message. This is an appeal to you to tell me how to skip your outgoing message. In my voice mail system (Sprint), you press the # key to skip the message and go directly to leaving the message. (Some voice mail systems use the 1 key instead.) So I tell people to press # unless they want to hear my outgoing message, which can either be mercifully short or contain actually useful information about how to get in touch. Please! Please! Save me minutes of my time and the frustration of dropped calls in bad cell zones by letting me leave you a message as a fast as possible!

Microsoft Dead

I love troublemakers and Marc Benioff is first rate. He wrote an essay to his employees about Microsoft's announcement of Microsoft Live -- software as service versions of its applications software. His point of view is blatantly self promoting, which is what makes it so delicious, since Microsoft's is the same. He's talking about Microsoft CRM, formerly a licensed application that came in versions 1.2 and 3.0 but is going to be (any day now) Microsoft CRM Live: "Microsoft has a new version called "Live."  It's the new on demand offering that will not be compatible with the current product line.  So, perhaps they should rename their entire Microsoft software product line, Microsoft Dead.  It's the analog to Microsoft Live, the new on demand offering that does not even exist."

God Is In the Details

Here are two approaches to packaging a digital camera. The first is the original Sony Cybershot,  which was and still pretty much is the state of the art if you read the comparison charts: 3x optical zoom, 5 megapixel files, yaddy yaddy. (Sony has a new Cybershot that is slicker looking and may be packaged differently, but I didn't want another because of the experience I had with the first.) The second is the new Canon Powershot SD450, which I've just bought to replace the Cybershot. In case you can't figure out what the difference is, Sony made me carry around a very long power cord and a cradle with a USB cable. I'm sure they thought it was cute that you could either plug the power cord directly into the camera to recharge it or you could plug it into the cradle to both recharge and move the pictures off the camera.  Canon on the other hand provides a handy little device that you use to recharge the battery and assumes you'll use a card adapter to copy pictures off the SD card. (Yes, you can use a USB cable to connect the camera, but why bring yet another cable with you when you travel!)

Compliance note

I just can't resist lifting this little ditty from Richard Davis' weekly letter (called Weekly Musings!) and reproduce without comment (or permission actually):

"As defined by the Let’s Make Someone Pay for the Bubble and Sell-Side Research Looks Like a Good Target Act of 2002, this note includes forward, backward and contemporaneous statements that probably don’t shield this analyst or his firm from liability.  Specifically, individuals  who read this note will see terms such as “believes”, “expects”, “anticipates”, “forecasts”, “who the heck knows”, “you’re guess is as good as mine” and “lot’s of luck on this one”.  These are all forms of mealy-mouthed, hedged forecasts.  As such, should you have a question or comment on this text, we remind you that we were never there and we don’t recall.  You are warned that any recording, rebroadcasting or reuse of this note will result in your immediate and indefinite incarceration in a humid holding pen a few miles south of the Florida Keys."

Davis is a research analyst at Needham & Co., who appears to have been freed by the separation of banking and research to make aggressive, cogent comments that appeal to my troublemaking nature. If I'm ever regulated (lord save me), I'll adopt this statement for my formal disclosures too. And maybe I'll even adapt it to the end-of-email statement that companies have become so fond of inserting automatically these days.  Oops: Have to run -- they're calling my flight to Florida so I can be incarcerated for reproducing this!

You KNOW I Speak English!

A major setback in consumer interfaces! That's the introduction of a new menu in ATMs. You stick your card in and the very first question you are asked is to pick your language. My bank, First Republic, now asks this question first thing. And United Airlines asks it every time I check in at Easy Check-in machines. (I'm pretty sure Delta and others do as well, so it doesn't sound like something one industry or one company has decided to do.)

Here's the problem: That card you stick in knows what language you speak as well as your name, account number, and a bunch of other data. So why does the machine need to ask me every single time? I suspect  it's the heavy hand of government regulation: Someone decided it was discriminatory to presume that every person with an ATM card speaks English. (We're not allowed to actually have a national language anymore, much less expect everyone to read, write and speak it!) But the fact that the machine can't remember which language I prefer and make sure that's what's presented to me is a technical crime of the first order. Another crime against humanity and human-ness in machines.

Remote Graveyard

I'm not sure this picture requires a caption, but everybody who walks into my dining room comments on it. The display was accidental. When I moved to my place in The Presidio, all the remotes got collected in one place.  And I stopped using all of them except the TiVo remote, which is the only one missing from the collection. I'm not using VHS anymore. Nor DVD. Just TiVo. And iPod. And Sonos. There's a Big Thought in there somewhere, but this is Small Thoughts.

Thank you for using genuine Microsoft software

That's the message I got when I finished validating my computer so that I could download the beta version of some new free Microsoft software, called Microsoft AntiSpyware. I tried downloading it using Firefox, but was told that Firefox couldn't run an ActiveX control. So I used Microsoft Internet Explorer to download it. That worked, sort of. I still had to install the ActiveX control and, before I could use it, I had to click between 6 and 10 dialog boxes. Part of that clicking was to allow Microsoft to validate that I am using a Genuine Copy of Windows. Some of those clicks were to tell Spybot Search & Destroy, which I already have installed to prevent against spyware, to allow Microsoft's ActiveX control for validating my computer open the registry of my computer. If you're not confused about this, then too bad: Microsoft had to use the opportunity of giving us a free fix to something that was broken in the operating system to make sure you haven't been stealing software from them! Microsoft also had to make sure that you aren't stealing by using a proprietary standard (ActiveX) that isn't supported by non-Microsoft browsers. Sounds an awful lot like the old days of copy protection: We (Microsoft) might be making a ton of money selling this software, but we don't trust our customers enough to make it easy to use the software. Does Microsoft wonder why customers don't think it has their best interests at heart?

Oh, by the way, Microsoft Antispyware took 4 minutes and 42 seconds to determine that there was no spyware on my computer. I guess Spybot, which is freeware (with donations requested) made by one programmer working on his own and requires no validation and can be downloaded with Firefox, actually already caught all the spyware that might have been on my computer. I used Paypal to donate $20 to that guy, since he seemed to have solved my problem.